QA # 5

This week I read an article about reducing “look alike and sound alike” error. Since drug errors had affected several people, it has become a common quality issue in healthcare field. Almost every healthcare organization is trying to improve this issue by adopting many different tools. According to the article, USP is offering “Drug Error Finder” database to healthcare organization. It will help reduce organizations to reduce error and clinicians will be able to provide better healthcare to patients. This database includes more than 1500 commonly used “sound alike or look alike” drugs. This database is updated by USP and available for free to organizations. I think it is good idea to adopt this database to improve quality of organization. It is good encouragement for healthcare organizations to improve patient care and quality.
The Quality tool for this week is “buying prescription medication online” I think it is very common trend these days. Most of the online medications do not required physician’s order. It made me think that how people are sure that they are getting is a right dose of the medications; because there is difference of “UNIT” in US and rest of the world. Then medication might not be authentic because these companies are not approved by FDA. It really concerns me that on one hand we are trying improve medical error, but on other hand people are risking their lives by getting medications, without making sure about the source.

Article can be found at : http://www.psqh.com/enews/0908f.html