Preventing Prescription Errors
Posted by bibby1 on May 4, 2009
The use of multiple medications presents the risk of dangerous drug interactions. In a recent survey**, 950 clinicians were asked to correctly identify drug pairs with potential dangerous interactions. Results of the study indicated that only 43% of the respondents correctly identified the dangerous pairs.
Miner library subscribes to and makes available to University of Rochester affiliates Micromedex, a collection of drug databases. Micromedex includes a tool that allows you to check for drug interactions.
To access, select Micromedex from the Miner library homepage. Then, enter the names of the drugs and select “check interactions”. The results display includes categories for Drug-Drug, Drug-Allergy, Drug-Food, Drug-Ethanol, Drug-Lab, Drug-Tobacco, Drug-Pregnancy , and Drug-Lactation. A summary and documentation are provided as well as a rating regarding the severity of the interaction.
If you are a PDA user, you may want to look at the list of PDA resources provided by Miner library. The list includes links to free and paid resources, many with pharmacological information.
**Source: Drug Safety. 2008;31(6):525-36. Prescribers’ knowledge of and sources of information for potential drug-drug interactions: a postal survey of US prescribers. Ko Y, Malone DC, Skrepnek GH, Armstrong EP, Murphy JE, Abarca J, Rehfeld RA, Reel SJ, Woosley RL.
