5
PATIENT
SAFETY
10 Top Patient Safety Issues for 2016
By Shannon Barnet, Max Green & Heather Punke
Medication errors. e Agency
for Healthcare Research and Qual-
ity calls medication errors "one of
the most common types of inpa-
tient errors," as nearly 5 percent of
hospitalized patients are affected
by adverse drug events annually.
New evidence uncovered in 2015
shows that medication errors are
not just a problem for inpatients:
ey abound during surgeries as
well.
In fact, medication errors occur in
some form in nearly half of all sur-
geries, according to research from
Massachusetts General Hospital
published in October. Mistakes in
labeling, incorrect dosage, neglect-
ing to treat a problem indicated
by a patient's vital signs and doc-
umentation errors were the med-
ication errors that occurred most
frequently.
"We definitely have room for im-
provement in preventing periop-
erative medication errors, and now
that we understand the types of er-
rors that are being made and their
frequencies, we can begin to devel-
op targeted strategies to prevent
them," said Karen Nanji, MD, lead
author of the study.
Diagnostic errors. Diagnostic
errors were thrust into the spot-
light late in 2015 thanks to an In-
stitute of Medicine report titled
"Improving Diagnosis in Health
Care." e report asserts that di-
agnostic errors account for 6 to 17
percent of hospital adverse events
and roughly 10 percent of patient
deaths, indicating definite room
for improvement in this space.
"e report launched an import-
ant conversation about a serious
patient safety issue with broad im-
pact across the continuum of care,"
Tejal Gandhi, MD, president and
CEO of the National Patient Safety
Foundation, wrote in a December
blog.
e new year provides an opportu-
nity for hospitals to focus efforts to
improve this serious patient safe-
ty issue. e IOM report outlines
several possible solutions to reme-
dying diagnostic errors, including
partnering with patients and their
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