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Jeff Sutherland

Twice the Energy with Half the Stress

Medical Error: 25% of the time, the drug your physician prescribes for you will harm you

I’ve always recommended that no drugs be taken without the patient personally reading the Physicians Desk Reference and understanding side effects and contraindications. The New England Journal of Medicine just published an article on outpatient medication errors which appear to be four times more prevalent than inpatient medication errors. Since we kill over 100,000 people a year with inpatient medications, the deaths due to outpatient medications could be much larger, although none of the serious adverse events in this study were fatal or life threatening.



Adverse Drug Events in Ambulatory Care

Tejal K. Gandhi, M.D., M.P.H., Saul N. Weingart, M.D., Ph.D., Joshua Borus, B.A., Andrew C. Seger, R.Ph., Josh Peterson, M.D., Elisabeth Burdick, M.S., Diane L. Seger, R.Ph., Kirstin Shu, B.A., Frank Federico, R.Ph., Lucian L. Leape, M.D., and David W. Bates, M.D.

ABSTRACT

Background: Adverse events related to drugs occur frequently among inpatients, and many of these events are preventable. However, few data are available on adverse drug events among outpatients. We conducted a study to determine the rates, types, severity, and preventability of such events among outpatients and to identify preventive strategies.

Methods: We performed a prospective cohort study, including a survey of patients and a chart review, at four adult primary care practices in Boston (two hospital-based and two community-based), involving a total of 1202 outpatients who received at least one prescription during a four-week period. Prescriptions were computerized at two of the practices and handwritten at the other two.

Results: Of the 661 patients who responded to the survey (response rate, 55 percent), 162 had adverse drug events (25 percent; 95 percent confidence interval, 20 to 29 percent), with a total of 181 events (27 per 100 patients). Twenty-four of the events (13 percent) were serious, 51 (28 percent) were ameliorable, and 20 (11 percent) were preventable. Of the 51 ameliorable events, 32 (63 percent) were attributed to the physician’s failure to respond to medication-related symptoms and 19 (37 percent) to the patient’s failure to inform the physician of the symptoms.

The medication classes most frequently involved in adverse drug events were selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors (10 percent), beta-blockers (9 percent), angiotensin-converting–enzyme inhibitors (8 percent), and nonsteroidal antiinflammatory agents (8 percent). On multivariate analysis, only the number of medications taken was significantly associated with adverse events.

Conclusions: Adverse events related to drugs are common in primary care, and many are preventable or ameliorable. Monitoring for and acting on symptoms are important. Improving communication between outpatients and providers may help prevent adverse events related to drugs.