Newswise — A study presented at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists proposes that the relatively simple act of universalizing the look of medication labels can significantly decrease the occurrence of medication errors "• errors that cause patients unnecessary harm and cost the health care industry an estimated $3.5 billion each year.

According to Elizabeth H. Sinz, M.D., Donald E. Martin, M.D., and their group from the Department of Anesthesiology at Penn State Hershey, medication errors are all too common.

"An average hospital patient may experience one medication error per day, contributing to 1.5 million preventable adverse drug reactions each year," said Dr. Sinz.

Around one-third of these events are the result of errors during the process of administration of intravenous medications "• but there currently are no regulations on color usage in the labeling of pharmaceutical products. The Penn State study points to some fairly simple solutions.

"We propose that general use of the international color coding of drug classes used in anesthesia by the pharmaceutical industry for labeling and medication packaging might reduce the number of errors which result from human factors," said Dr. Martin.

In the study's simulated operating room environment, volunteer anesthesiologists, residents and nurses drew up medications with different colored labels at an ever-increasing speed to mimic an emergency. The research group then counted mistakes and near-mistakes and found that although the number of actual mistakes was too low to detect a difference, when the color of the label on the syringe matched the color of the label on the bottle, fewer near-mistakes occurred compared to when the colors didn't match.

And when peel-off labels that are taken off the bottle and placed on the syringe were used, errors were reduced and fewer commands were skipped.

Due to a broader interest in patient safety in health care, medication errors have become the focus of influential organizations such as the Joint Commission, said Dr. Martin.

"Many 'high-tech' solutions have been suggested, including use of bar codes, radiofrequency identification for medications and computerized medication administration processes," said Dr. Sinz.

"But besides their high costs, all of these methods have flaws that may produce as many errors as they eliminate. Furthermore, these solutions are often impractical for fast-paced situations in operating rooms or during emergencies."

The Penn State team is convinced that this study's method of utilizing a simulated emergency-type environment is the best way to break down the medication administration process and scrutinize each piece of the puzzle before implementing it in a real clinical setting.

And though the process as a whole can be extremely complex, the solutions to some of the problems in medication administration might be anything but complex.

"Simple systems, such as the color-coding methods used in our study, are more reliable and useable than complex systems," said Dr. Sinz.

Anesthesiologists: Physicians providing the lifeline of modern medicine. Founded in 1905, the American Society of Anesthesiologists is an educational, research and scientific association with 43,000 members organized to raise and maintain the standards of the medical practice of anesthesiology and improve the care of the patient.

For more information visit the American Society of Anesthesiologists Web site at http://www.asahq.org.

Media Registration for the 2008 ASA Annual Meeting is now available at http://www2.asahq.org/web/miscfiles/08media.asp.

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American Society of Anesthesiologists 2008 Annual Meeting