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IPFS News Link • Healthcare Industry

Hospitals Mess Up Medications in Surgery--a Lot

• bloomberg.com

About half of all surgeries involve some kind of medication error or unintended drug side effects, if a new study done at one of America's most prestigious academic medical centers is any indication.

The rate, calculated by researchers from the anesthesiology department at Massachusetts General Hospital who observed 277 procedures there, is startlingly high compared with those in the few earlier studies. Those studies relied mostly on self-reported data from clinicians, rather than directly watching operations, and found errors to be exceedingly rare.

"There is a substantial potential for medication-related harm and a number of opportunities to improve safety," according to the new study, published today in the journal Anesthesiology. More than one-third of the observed errors led to some kind of harm to the patient.


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