BACKGROUND Ambulatory antibiotic prescribing contributes to the development of antibiotic resistance and increases societal costs. Here, we estimate the hidden societal cost of antibiotic resistance per antibiotic prescribed in the United States. METHODS In an exploratory analysis, we used published data to develop point and range estimates for the hidden societal cost of antibiotic resistanc...

BACKGROUND Health literacy has increasingly been viewed as a patient safety issue and may contribute to medication errors. OBJECTIVE To examine patients' abilities to understand and demonstrate instructions found on container labels of common prescription medications. DESIGN Cross-sectional study using in-person, structured interviews. SETTING 3 primary care clinics serving mostly indigen...

PURPOSE Medication errors (MEs) are a major factor limiting the effectiveness and safety of pharmacological therapies in critically ill patients. The purpose was to determine if a preventive interventions program (PIP) is associated with a significant reduction on prevalence of patients with MEs in intensive care unit (ICU). METHODS A prospective before-after study was conducted in a random s...

OBJECTIVE: To determine the dispensing error rate and to identify factors associated with them, and to propose prevention actions. METHODS: A cross-sectional study focusing on the occurrence of dispensing errors in a general hospital in Belo Horizonte that uses a mixed system (a combination of multidose and unit dose systems) of collective and individualized dosing. RESULTS: A total of 422 pres...

INTRODUCTION Spectacle non-compliance is a significant problem in pediatric patients, and may have a variety of consequences. Non-compliance with myopic refractive correction could be secondary to a variety of issues, including age, discomfort, gender, urban vs. rural residence, presenting visual acuity, and degree of refractive error. We observed a phenomenon in our pediatric patients with ret...

Introduction: Prescription opioid (PO) abuse is a growing public health concern worldwide as evidenced by an increasing number of opioid-related hospital admissions with a striking lack of research examining the neural basis underlying cognitive symptomology. Drugs of abuse, through their impact on the dopaminergic system, are thought to disrupt the pre-frontal cognitive network regulating impu...

the aim of this qualitative study was to determine the most important medical errors made by gynecology residents. this study used a delphi technique in three rounds. first, a list of common errors was prepared using a questionnaire, then the most important errors were prioritized and finally, the managerial and training procedures were determined for errors. in this study, 45 common errors wer...

OBJECTIVE To assess the impact of administration errors when transcribing treatments to nurses' administration forms, and to estimate the impact of electronically assisted prescription (EAP) in minimising these errors. METHOD A prospective, observational study in hospitalised patients. In a representative sample changes in treatment in the 24 h before the examination are analysed. Transcripti...

UNLABELLED This study evaluated changes in abuse exposures, therapeutic error exposures, and diversion into illegal markets associated with brand extended-release oxycodone (ERO) following introduction of reformulated ERO. Original ERO and reformulated ERO street prices also were compared. Data from the Poison Center and Drug Diversion programs of the Researched Abuse, Diversion and Addiction-R...