Eskew JA, Jacobi J, Buss WF, Warhurst HM, DeBord CL. Using innovative technologies to set new safety standards for the infusion of intravenous medications. Hospital Pharmacy. 2002 Nov;37(11):1179-1189.

The authors discuss how technology can be used for the delivery of intravenous medications. 

Gosbee JW, Anderson T. Human factors engineering design demonstrations can enlighten your RCA team. Quality and Safety in Health Care. 2003;12:119-121.

Health care teams routinely conduct root cause analysis (RCA) of adverse events to answer three questions: What happened? Why? What can be done to prevent it in the future? A case of an RCA investigation of a retained sponge following cardiac surgery shows how human factors engineering — understanding the interactions of people and equipment — can help RCA teams focus on systems problems, instead of blaming individuals or policy violations.

Full Text Available! Click View Article below.

Michel P, Quenon JL, de Sarasqueta AM, Scemama O. Comparison of three methods for estimating rates of adverse events and rates of preventable adverse events in acute care hospitals. British Medical Journal. 2004;328(7433):199.

Out of the three methods of comparing adverse events — cross-sectional, prospective and retrospective — it was concluded that the prospective method is best suited to raise awareness within the practitioner environment, reduce the severity of their errors, and their linkage with adverse events.

Full Text Available! Click View Article below.

Samore MH, Evans RS, Lassen A, et al. Surveillance of medical device-related hazards and adverse events in hospitalized patients. Journal of the American Medical Association. 2004;291(3):325-334.

Adverse medical device events (ADMEs) are adverse events causing harm to patients as a result of medical device-related hazards. Studies show that there is a high rate of ADMEs, and the authors argue that this is an important patient safety risk that needs additional research and attention.

Rozich JD, Howard RJ, Justeson JM, Macken PD, Lindsay ME, Resar RK. Standardization as a mechanism to improve safety in health care. Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Safety. 2004;30(1):5-14.

An increasing number of studies show that when patterns of care are widely divergent, clinical outcomes suffer and, as a result, safety and reliability may be compromised. This article discusses how standardization may help to increase uniformity of practice, increase safety, and possibly reduce costs. Also described is an effort made by Luther Midlefort, Mayo Health System, to reduce variation by creating a system-wide protocol for insulin use. After six weeks, Luther Midelfort achieved a great reduction in the number of hypoglycemic events as a result of standardized practices.

Kanjanarat P, Winterstein AG, Johns TE, Hatton RC, Gonzalez-Rothi R, Segal R. Nature of preventable adverse drug events in hospitals: A literature review. American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy. 2003;(60)17:1750-1759.

A peer reviewed literature search was conducted by the Department of Pharmacy Health Care Administration to find those articles which identified drug classes, types of errors, types of adverse outcomes, and any others which are related to preventable adverse drug events (PADEs). After significant findings on topics such as renal, hepatic, allergic reactions and cardio problems, it was concluded that the majority of reported PADEs are from a small portion of types of drugs, errors, and adverse outcomes. More focus on these areas could greatly reduce the number of PADEs in these areas.

Rothschild JM, Federico FA, Gandhi TK, Kaushal R, Williams DH, Bates DW. Analysis of medication-related malpractice claims: Causes, preventability, and costs. Archives of Internal Medicine. 2002;162(21):2414-2420.

Adverse drug events (ADEs) are frequently result in malpractice claims, which are extremely costly and usually preventable. This article describes a retrospective review of malpractice claims to identify potential ADEs. The review found that most of these ADEs were preventable, and about half occurred in outpatients. The most frequent types of ADEs are discussed, as well as their possible prevention with error proofing and process standardization.

Etchells E. Do pharmacists' presence on rounding teams reduce preventable adverse drug events in hospital general medical units? Canadian Medical Association Journal. 2004;170(3):333.

Comment on: "Pharmacists on rounding teams reduce preventable adverse drug events in hospital general medicine units" [Archives of Internal Medicine. 2003;163(17):2014-2018]. This commentary summarizes the findings of the study and concludes that although there is no harm in the pharmacist interaction with rounding teams, there is also no evidence to show that a single study from one hospital can be used to suggest system-wide changes across common practices.

Kucukarslan SN, Peters M, Mlynarek M, Nafziger DA. Pharmacists on rounding teams reduce preventable adverse drug events in hospital general medicine units. Archives of Internal Medicine. 2003;163(17):2014-2018.

This study evaluates the impact of having the pharmacist participate in the physician rounding team on reducing medical errors during the prescribing step. The study concluded that the participation of pharmacists during the medical rounding team's evaluation of the patient significantly reduces the occurrence of preventable ADEs.

General-purpose infusion pumps. Health Devices. 2002 Oct;31(10):353-387.

This evaluation study carries out a comparison of four newly-evaluated pumps from three suppliers, summarizes the findings, and updates the ratings for 22 additional models. A 2003 study by the same publisher evaluates two new pumps.