ABSTRACT
The Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences estimated in 2006 that medical errors harm as many as 1.5 million people per year in the United States. The few existing studies of the costs associated with medication errors are limited to the health-care costs incurred by preventable injuries. Thus, errors can occur with any therapeutic or supplemental drug product at any point in the curative or restorative handling or administration of the medications and in any hospital, long-term, or community setting. Inadequate monitoring of prescribed drugs requires coordination between laboratory therapeutic monitoring of medication blood concentrations and the intended therapeutic goals. It also involves attention to the appearance of adverse reactions that may occur during the course of treatment. Any drug preparation has the potential to elicit an allergic reaction. Even a careful patient medication history may not reveal an allergic tendency. Immediate hypersensitivity reactions occurring within minutes or hours of consumption are often easiest to detect.
