Abstract
Increasing numbers of patients are surviving the intensive care unit. Concordant with our shifting focus to minimizing intensive care unit-acquired morbidity, in the present issue of Critical Care Moyen, Camire, and Stelfox describe the importance of quality pharmacotherapy. They describe challenges and potential solutions to this source of iatrogenic injury in our vulnerable patients. Their article reminds us not to understate the importance of medication error, to avoid overstating the benefits of incompletely proven methods to prevent medication error, and to distinguish harmful medication errors from other types of medication error.
Highlights
The intensive care unit (ICU) represents the meeting of the high-risk patient, polypharmacy, physiologic complexity, and an interventional environment that provides many opportunities for error [2]
In the present issue of Critical Care, Moyen, Camire, and Stelfox describe the importance of quality pharmacotherapy [1]
Rothchild’s direct observational, single-centre study in an adult ICU found a serious medication error occurred once every 8 patient-days
Summary
The ICU represents the meeting of the high-risk patient, polypharmacy, physiologic complexity, and an interventional environment that provides many opportunities for error [2]. Medication error is the most commonly observed threat to patient safety in the intensive care unit (ICU). In the present issue of Critical Care, Moyen, Camire, and Stelfox describe the importance of quality pharmacotherapy [1].
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