We learn from our mistakes only if we admit we're making them. And it appears that the medical community is increasingly stepping forward to do just that, according to U.S. Pharmacopeia's fourth annual report of hospital medication errors. In the first year of this voluntary (and anonymous) reporting system, 56 hospitals reported slightly more than 40,000 snafus. This year 500 hospitals came forward with 192,000 admissions of error. USP's database now lists more than 500,000 cases in which the wrong drug or wrong dose was prescribed (for example, a blood-pressure drug given to a patient who needed an antidepressant) or the...
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