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Reporting a Medication Error

What Should Be Reported?

We are interested in learning about medication errors, near misses, hazardous situations, or bad drug reactions experienced by you or a loved one. These problems may be related to:

  • Issues with prescriptions
  • Pharmacy or hospital procedures, staff, and systems
  • Inadequate medication instructions
  • Poor communication of information from a healthcare professional
  • Medication labels and packaging
  • Names of medications
  • The preparation and/or mixing of medications
  • The way in which you order medication (Internet, telephone, mail, etc.)
  • Unexpected reactions to a drug

WHAT TYPES OF ERRORS AND OTHER EVENTS SHOULD BE REPORTED?

Medication errors, near misses, or hazardous situations that should be reported include but are not limited to:

  • Receiving the wrong drug, strength, or dose of medication that was ordered for you
  • Being prescribed a drug to which you are allergic
  • Having an unexpected reaction to a drug because you were taking another medication that shouldn't taken together
  • Taking a drug incorrectly because you did not understand how or when to take it
  • Developing an already known but unexpected side effect because the provider did not give clear or full instructions on how to properly take the drug. For example, if you got an upset stomach because you were not told to drink a full glass of water when taking the medicine or you became severely sunburned because you were not told that the medicine will make you more sensitive to the sun.
  • A problem with equipment used to give the medication such as with intravenous (IV) pumps, patient controlled analgesic (PCA) pumps, insulin pens, etc.

To report an error, please click here.

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