Key Terms
Addiction
What is compulsive and uncontrollable use of a drug substance for reasons other than prescribed?
Contaminated product error
What is when aseptic technique is not followed in compounding, and the drug is no longer sterile and causes a microorganism infection?
Extra dose error
What is an error in which more doses are received by a patient than were prescribed by the physician?
iPledge program
What is a specific risk assessment program for isotretinoin, which can cause a high incidence of birth defects if not properly monitored?
MEDMARX
What is an Internet-based program of the USp for use by hospitals and healthcare systems for documenting, tracking, and identifying trends for adverse events and medication errors?
Adverse drug error
What occurs when the prescribed drug initiates an allergy or an adverse drug interaction flag that was missed?
Distraction error
What occurs when a technician or pharmacist is interrupted in the middle of a filling process and forgets a portion of key information or train of thought, and some information or a safety decision gets missed?
Fear error
What occurs when a technician fears the consequences of speaking up and asking the pharmacist or the prescriber to double-check an element of the prescription?
Medguide
What is printed information in which the FDA communicates side effects, adverse reactions, and black-box warnings for high-risk drugs?
MedWatch
What is a voluntary program by the FDA that allows any healthcare professional or consumer to report a serious adverse event associated with the use of any drug, biological device, or dietary supplement?
ADR (adverse drug reaction)
What is a negative consequence to a patient from taking a particular drug, due to the nature of the drug itself, for certain vulnerable populations?
Documentation error
What is when essential information is not properly noted, such as a prescription, allergy, patient request, or other information in the medication profile, or not properly processing insurance or billing?
Human failure
What is an error generated by failure that occurs at an individual level?
Medication education error
What is when the proper medication education materials and counsel are not passed on to the patient or medication administrator?
Mislabeling error
What is when a medication has incorrect information on it leading to the wrong use of it, or the wrong patient receiving it?
Alert fatigue
What is where the technician and/or the pharmacist starts to have a relaxed attitude and bypasses drug utilization warnings?
Drug seeker
What is a patient who is dependent on or addicted to drugs, who may receive precriptions for the same or similar controlled drugs from several physicians and pharmacies?
Incomplete information error
What occurs when full information is not available because the patient was not asked sufficient or proper questions, or the answers were somehow not recorded in the profile, or the patient witheld information deliberately or by accident of memory?
Medication error
What is any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is in the control of the healthcare professional, patient, or consumer?
Omission error
What is an administration error in which a prescribed dose is not given?
Capture error
What is an error that occurs when focus on a task in diverted elsewhere and, therefore, the error goes undetected?
Drug tolerance
What is when the body adapts to a drug so that higher doses are needed to produce the same pharmacological effect?
Incorrect assumption error
What occurs when an essential piece of information cannot be verified, and an assumption is made?
Medication noncompliance
What is failure to take medication therapy as the physician instructs; also called nonadherence?
Patient Safety Organization
What are groups designed to collect and analyze error data from more than one health provider and offer quality improvement counsel?