While no medical provider makes a medication error on purpose, they occur on a regular basis in emergency rooms throughout Pennsylvania and the rest of the country. Because those in the medical profession do not want to harm their patients, improvements to processes that may help lower the occurrence of things such as a medication errors, are constantly being made.

A recently study conducted in the emergency department at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque provides information that may help to make a case for staffing emergency rooms with pharmacists in addition to current medical professionals.

During the 3 month study in 2009, pharmacists were staffed for 10 hours out of the day. While there the pharmacists assisted in attending to all patients in need of resuscitation or who sustained a major trauma. Of the 242 patients the pharmacists saw, a total of six medication errors were reported. This translates into 2.5 percent of the patients. Conversely, of the 452 patients who were not attended to by the pharmacists, medication errors were reported in 30.3 percent of the cases. This translates into 137 patients who were subjected to a medical error.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, antibiotics and pain medications were the drugs most often involved in the reported errors. Other drugs that appeared in the study include medicine used to address heart issues, gastrointestinal medications and antiemetics. In addition to patients receiving the wrong dosage, reported errors included administering the medication incorrectly and giving the medicine without paying attention to the status of the order.

While more information is needed, the study may provide support for regularly staffing pharmacists in the emergency room which potentially could help to lower the rate of medical mistakes made.

Source: Pharmacy Practice News, "In Emergency Room, Pharmacists Slash Rate of Drug Errors," Terri D'Arrigo, Oct. 2011