Safety

Steve Freed, Publisher, Diabetes In Control Errors in diabetes care are a common cause of complications and can result in disability and even death. The diabetes errors being reported are probably much lower than the number actually occurring. The problem of errors in diabetes care facing health care providers is now ...

From the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP): High-alert medications are drugs that bear a heightened risk of causing significant patient harm when used in error. Although mistakes may or may not be more common with these drugs, the consequences of an error are clearly more devastating to patients. Use ...

A 29-year-old woman with insulin-dependent diabetes noted a painful erosion at the site of the tattoo which she had gotten 7 days before. A culture isolated staphylococcus aureus confirming the clinical impression of staph. This diagnosis was not entirely unexpected, since patients with diabetes mellitus are predisposed to staphylococcal infection. An oral ...

From the Institute for Safe Medication Practices: Once again, a US hospital must contend with the fact that thousands of the hospital’s patients may have received an insulin injection from an insulin pen previously used for another patient. In this recent event, patients are being notified of possible transmission of blood-borne ...

From our partners at the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP): Office staff at an endocrinology practice was asked to see a patient who was having low blood glucose while receiving their insulin using a Medtronic MiniMed Revel portable infusion pump. The pump allows information to be downloaded and it showed ...

When sitagliptin (Januvia) first came out, I was called by our legal affairs department about a patient of another MD at the University of Penn whose house staff had ordered 1000 mg sitagliptin instead of 100mg. As the drug had just come out, the staff was not very familiar with ...

One of my patients had a serious head injury from a fall which resulted in an unconscious period of time when on vacation. She spent five days in a hospital neuro unit during recovery. She had a list of all her medications, medical history (brief), and latest lab work including liver ...

I was asked to see a patient for instruction on insulin administration. After leaving the hospital she had started her insulin at home. During a telephone conversation she mentioned that she was concerned that after injection she noticed some liquid was running down her abdomen. I asked that she bring ...

Problem: More than 3 million Americans will rely on services provided by long-term care (LTC) facilities at some point during 2013, and more than 1.4 million will live in the nearly 16,000 LTC facilities on any given day.1 About one-third of these residents will take an average of nine medications ...

Because insulin is at the top of the “High-Alert Medication List,” we are presenting this updated article from our partner at ISMP (Institute for Safe Medication Practices). Your high-alert medication list — Relatively useless without associated risk-reduction strategies Problem: Have you ever watched the 1993 movie, Groundhog Day? Bill Murray ...