Would you make fewer medication errors if you received more feedback? Researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia evaluated antibiotic and narcotic prescribing in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), and pharmacists recorded all prescribing errors. Biweekly, a team of neonatologists, pharmacists and a research assistant reviewed the data and distilled the information into a constructive email sent to the prescribers, which encouraged two-way communications between the review team and the prescribers. Over the 17 months of the study, narcotic error rates decreased 83% but antibiotic error rates did not change. A possible explanation for this difference is that antibiotic prescriptions are more complex than narcotics; thus they are more likely to be mistakes in judgment rather than lapses or slips made while multitasking.

Read more