This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on ISI (1)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related article  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Patient Safety/ Medical Error  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor: In his Clinical Crossroads article about medication errors, Dr Bates¹ states that the "key parameters" of prescribing are drug name, dose, route, and frequency. To help reduce medication errors, 2 more components need to be added: duration of treatment and diagnosis. If a diagnosis of "human immunodeficiency virus infection" had been indicated on the prescription, pharmacy staff would have noticed that the patient, Ms K, had been prescribed the wrong medications. Adding duration of treatment and diagnosis would also provide an opportunity for physicians to double-check for errors when writing prescriptions.

This labeling of duration and diagnosis would help the physician during a patient's initial visit. It is helpful to know why patients are taking medications. Digoxin, for example, can be used either for cardiac irregularities or congestive heart failure, and some anticonvulsant medications can be used for behavior problems or seizures. The original prescribing physicians may . . . [Full Text of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati     What's this?

RELATED ARTICLE

A 40-Year-Old Woman Who Noticed a Medication Error
David W. Bates
JAMA. 2001;285(24):3134-3140.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Radio Frequency Identification Systems Technology in the Surgical Setting
Nagy et al.
SURG INNOV 2006;13:61-67.
ABSTRACT  

Community Pharmacists' Opinions About Having Diagnostic Data Provided with Prescriptions
Armstrong et al.
Journal of Pharmacy Practice 2003;16:361-365.
ABSTRACT