BehindTheMedspeak: Drug Error Finder

A superb new online resource which lets anyone — physician, pharmacist, nurse, patient, etc. — access a comprehensive searchable database to avoid medication errors.

From the website: "USP's Drug Error Finder allows a user to search more than 1,400 drugs involved in look–alike and/or sound–alike errors."

This goes on the front page of my iPod touch for instant access in the OR.

I cannot begin to count how many times over the years I have just missed injecting the wrong drug because of the near perfect size, shape and color mimicry of one label, bottle or ampoule for another whose contents would have had markedly different and potentially deleterious effects on an anesthetized patient.

Even with my way over the top practice of checking, rechecking, rechecking and checking yet again, even after I'm 100% certain I've got the right medication, about once a month I still throw a labeled and loaded syringe into the sharps box because I don't have a photographic recall of having drawn it up that morning.

See the videos above and below

to get a better sense of how easily devastating, sometimes fatal mistakes can occur in a clinical setting.

[via David Bronstein's article in the December 2008 issue of Anesthesiology News]