Medication errors common during surgery, study finds

In a new study on how often medication errors occur during surgery, researchers report that mistakes were made during almost half of the operations they analyzed. The mistakes included drug labeling errors, incorrect dosing, drug documentation mistakes, and/or failing to properly treat changes in a patient's vital signs during surgery. Overall, a medication error or adverse drug event was documented in 124 of 277 surgeries. Of the 3,675 medication administrations (most patients receive more than one drug during surgery), 193 medication errors and adverse drug events were recorded, the Harvard researchers said. And almost 80 percent of those events were determined to have been preventable.