Medical Terminology Research Assignment - Essay Example

Examples of a medication error is in the use of a long-acting prescription cough medicine. "Reports indicate that health care professionals have prescribed Tussionex for patients younger than the approved aged group of 6 years old and older, more frequently than the labeled dosing interval of every 12 hours ("extended release"), and that patients have administered the incorrect dose due to misinterpretation of the dosing directions and the use of inappropriate measuring devices. Overdose of Tussionex in older children, adolescents, and adults has also been associated with life-threatening and fatal breathing problems" (FDA News, 2008).

Another example is the overdose of acetaminophen in drugs marketed as Tylenol and Datril. These drugs should not be taken more than the dose prescribed or seen on the label, and not more than the number of days as prescribed for. Due to these incidences, government and non-government organizations in the United States and in the United Kingdom directly "warned doctors that the use of abbreviations in medical notes is putting patients' lives at risk." (Pocack, N, 2008). In an effort to reduce the number of medication errors drastically, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) has issued a list of abbreviations, acronyms and symbols that should no longer be used.

They did this because of the reported 44,000 and 96,000 deaths each year which were attributed to medication errors which have been shown to be due to flaws in parts of the system involving prescribing, repackaging, dispensing, administering, monitoring or a combination of two or more of the aforementioned. "Medication errors may result from single or multiple breakdowns in a system's continuum of diagnosing an ailment, planning a therapeutic regimen, prescribing and dispensing drugs, and administering the drug" (Philips J, 2001).

The article reviewed medical errors for a 5-year span (1993-1998). They noted that the most common cause of these errors was the indiscernible handwriting in prescriptions making the abbreviations look like something else. Example of an error resulting from poor handwriting; the "ug" as in microgram may seem like "ml" as in microliter; example of an error due to wrong abbreviation is "BT" for bedtime may be comprehended as "BID" as in three times a day. These errors are found most frequestly in clinical notes, prescriptions and treatment charts which are all over the workplace.

The use of these abbreviations should be kept to an absolute minimum if not any at all. They cause confusion and present a risk to patients. Similarly, on the same goal to minimize medication errors, the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) in 2003 created a list of "Do Not Use" abbreviations (IMSP List, 2003) which establishes a standard for abbreviations and terms used. And in 2005, the JCAHO suggested the Patient Safety Event Taxonomy which could facilitate a common approach for patient safety information systems (Chang A, 2005).

This taxonomic standardization scheme hopes to make it known to everyone that there is an existing standard set of words and/or phrases which are to be used, and no other in medication writing or prescription writing. In Canada, they too have shown that