Medication errors: EMERGing solutions

Abstract

C’est pire qu’un crime, c’est une fauteCharles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord (attributed)The error that Talleyrand is said to have considered worsethan a crime was Napoleon’s order to execute the Ducd’Enghien in 1794.The saying has also been attributed toJoseph Fouche, Bonaparte’s Minister of Police (later to bethe Duc d’Otrante) and to Antoine Boulay de la Meurthe (adeputy in the corps legislative). But whoever said it, itbetokens an attitude that the end justifies the means.And while one would not recommend breaking the law inorder to avoid medication errors, one should certainlystrive to avoid them as assiduously as one would refrainfrom committing a crime.A Pubmed search for the terms ‘medication errors’ or‘prescribing errors’yields nearly 8000 hits. [In contrast‘sur-gical errors’ yields about 100 hits – do surgeons not makeerrors?] And there is evidence that deaths from medicationerrors have been on the rise [1].This issue of the