Regulators,companies and safety groups need to collaborate more

摘要

Medicines regulators should work more closely with pharmaceutical companies and patient safety organisations to reduce medication errors,patient safety experts told a conference held in London last week.Packaging and medicine design,names of pharmaceuticals and labels contributed to some of the 6,000 medication errors reported every month to the National Reporting and Learning System from June 2006 to May 2007,noted Bruce Warner,senior pharmacist at the National Patient Safety Agency.One example of this was the proton pump inhibitor Losec (omeprazole) having a similar name to the diuretic Lasix (furosemide),said David Williams,clinical pharmacology lead for patient safety research at the University of Aberdeen.