A 19-year-old man is hospitalized for hallucinations, delusions, and disordered conduct. He is diagnosed with schizophrenia, and the doctor issues an order for him to start taking aripiprazole "2.0" mg. The patient is given 20 mg of aripiprazole instead of 2 mg. This order is missed via the pharmacy review procedure, and the nurse fails to query it before giving the patient aripiprazole. Which of the following interventions is the most successful in reducing this sort of error?

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Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Eductional Objective: Preventable causes of drug mistakes include illegible instructions and transcribing problems. The medicine mistake in this example might be due to an unclear decimal point or a transcribing problem. Although the development of computerized physician order input systems with drop-down choices for medicine, dose, route, and frequency has decreased the occurrence of these mistakes, these systems are not routinely available. To minimize dosage problems, physicians must write or type instructions correctly and avoid using trailing zeros. According to studies, educational initiatives that restrict the usage of specific abbreviations (e.g., QD, g) and eliminate trailing zeros result in a considerable reduction in transcribing mistakes.

A 19-Year-Old Man Is Hospitalized for Hallucinations, Delusions, and Disordered