Reducing Medical Error and Improving Patient Safety: A Methodology for Studying Pharmaceutical Error in Teams

Abstract

It has been noted that as many as 98,000 Americans die in hospitals each year as a consequence of medical error. In comparison to even the lowest estimated figures of medical error occurrence, it is believed that the number of deaths due to preventable events is still greater than deaths due to motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS. Of those errors committed, one type that occurs all too frequently, are those related to the dispensation of medications. Consequently, efforts are currently underway to develop methods for the study of this class of medical error. The current paper describes one such methodology and its use thus far for the study of individual performance, as well as recommending a research agenda that would be useful for investigating pharmaceutical error in the context of a team task performance situation.

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