If you have a loved one who resides in an Indiana assisted living facility, you may want to learn more about a study from Australia regarding medication errors in nursing homes. They do happen, but the study reports that errors may not be as common as you may think.
Those who oversee patients have a focus on reducing errors in medication that occur, according to studies on this subject. There was a finding that although errors do happen in nursing homes their impact is not significant.
Errors in hospitals
In the year 2000, a study found that up to 98,000 deaths a year were possibly the result of medical errors in hospitals. After that study, hospitals made efforts to remedy this situation.
Recent study in nursing homes
Whether it is nursing home neglect, carelessness or incompetence, the study showed that 75% of residents had prescriptions for at least one medicine that was not appropriate. Few serious effects were in the report, and that raises a question of whether they were under-reported, or they really did not happen frequently.
Accidents do happen
Accidents, including drug overdoses, were among the leading cause of death. In the U.S., the study showed that Johns Hopkins University researchers sought to have the coding for medical errors changed. This would lead to medical errors being the third leading cause of death, behind cardiovascular disease and cancer. The number of these accidents has been rising.
Nursing homes need to review procedures for prescriptions
It is important for nursing homes throughout the U.S. to monitor their system for prescribing drugs. Prescribing the wrong type of medicine may be considered neglect in a nursing home.
Medication errors may happen to residents of a nursing home. Prescribing teams–made up of the resident, care and nursing staff, pharmacists and medical practitioners–are one type of solution that was suggested as a result of the study of errors in medication.
