Medication Safety in the ED

How can we detect medication errors? Pharmacists play an important role. A prospective multicenter cohort study examined the records of over 16,000 patients presenting to 4 different academic and community Emergency Departments. Pharmacists documented their medication error interceptions, how the error was discovered, and the point within the medication cycle that errors occurred. Most errors occurred in the prescribing phase. Interestingly, routine order review uncovered only 34% of these errors; most were found during consultative activities.