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James F. Mayhew, MD
Arkansas Children's Hospital Little Rock

JAMA. 1985;254(3):357.

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

To the Editor.—

I read with interest Kurachek and Rockoff's report entitled "Inadvertent Intravenous Administration of Racemic Epinephrine."¹ I should like to limit my comments to the use of the word "inadvertent" when describing medical mishaps. Webster's Third New International Dictionary² defines inadvertent as "not turning the mind to a matter; heedless, negligent, inattentive." When using inadvertent to mean unintentional, when in fact it means negligent, we are placing ourselves in an unneeded jeopardy.

Two recent nationally published cases of unlabeled drugs being injected into the spinal cord attest to the magnitude of the problem when mistakes are made by not labeling or by mislabeling vials and syringes. However, the naive use of inadvertent as a description for an unintentional oversight is misleading and does not convey the thought the authors wish to make.

I believe that the word "inadvertent," with its nonmedical meaning, should be avoided in . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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