Report on Physician Medication Errors

Communication problems and lack of knowledge are the main causes in medication errors and adverse drug events. 
This was discovered in a study of a prototype web-based medication error and adverse drug event reporting system.
Research on the use of MEADERS (Medication Error and Adverse Drug Event Reporting System), developed by investigators from the Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University School of Medicine led by Atif Zafar, M.D., appears in the November/December 2010 issue of the Annals of Family Medicine.
"We as physicians have a responsibility to make good decisions and to translate those decisions into safe and effective care. If we make a mistake we need to learn from the mistake and prevent it from reoccurring. We found this first generation reporting system to be popular with physicians and others in their offices, in spite of time pressures and a culture that does not support admitting mistakes," said William M. Tierney, M.D., president and CEO of the Regenstrief Institute. Dr. Tierney, who is also associate dean for clinical effectiveness research at the IU School of Medicine, is a co-developer of MEADERS and is the senior author of the Annals of Family Medicine study.
Urban, suburban and rural primary care practices in California, Connecticut, Oregon and Texas used MEADERS for 10 weeks, submitting 507 confidential event reports. The average time spent reporting an event was a little over four minutes. Seventy percent of reports included medication errors only. Only two percent included both medication errors and adverse drug events.
Source:MedIndia