Anesthesiologists in Oregon may be less likely to make medication mistakes if they use prefilled syringes. Some hospitals are switching to prefilled syringes as a way to save time, money and improve patient safety. At Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New...
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The use of prefilled syringes in hospitals
Oregon patients might be interested to learn that some hospitals around the country are switching to the use of prefilled syringes over vials of medication in hospital operating rooms. At Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, the syringes are in use in the inpatient...
Opioid use may be cause of many “dead in bed” cases
Hospital patients in Oregon who are prescribed opioid painkillers may be at risk for serious injuries. Opioids can significantly suppress a patient's respiratory system, which can the brain of oxygen. Some medical experts believe that fatal medication errors...
Parents sue over slow removal of swallowed button battery
Oregon parents of young children may be aware of the dangers of button batteries. Shaped like small coins, they can be easily swallowed by toddlers, causing permanent injuries or death. According to the National Capital Poison Center, button batteries were...
Strategies for reducing medical error rates
Oregon residents might know that heart disease and cancer are among top causes of death in the nation. However, they might be surprised that they are closely followed on the list by medical mistakes. There are various settings in which errors could occur, and...
How patient errors may impact Washington residents
Between January 2013 and July 2015, the Patient Safety Organization of the ERCI Institute received reports of 7,613 wrong-patient events. Those reports were sent voluntarily by 181 different health care facilities during that time. However, it is believed that...
Using electronic patient records to reduce medical errors
Oregon residents should be concerned that communication between health care professionals regarding a patient's condition can significantly affect the chances of recovery. When one doctor's shift has ended and another doctor is responsible for a patient's care,...
Possible hepatitis B exposure for dialysis patients
Oregon dialysis patients may have heard about a facility in their neighboring state where people might have been exposed to hepatitis B. In May, public health officials in Seattle were notified by a hospital that discovered staff were not screening and...
Some hospitals lack adequate policies for never events
Some Oregon residents may have heard of medical mistakes such as operating on the wrong patient or leaving a surgical tool inside a patient. Dubbed "never events" because they should never happen, a total of 29 of these types of errors have been identified....
Hospital staff may become desensitized to medical alarms
The sound of a car alarm going off may have sent Oregon residents rushing to their windows or reaching for their phones to call the police when the technology was first introduced a few decades ago, but the sounds made by these security systems have become so...