ABSTRACT
The Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences estimated in 1999 that medical errors killed as many as 98,000 people per year in the U.S., more than car crashes. About 7,000 of those deaths were attributed to drug errors, including wrong drugs, wrong doses, or fatal combinations. A 2002 study of 368 hospitals cited overworked nursing staff, doctors’ handwriting, and computer-entry errors for drug mistakes as the most common reasons for the errors.
