The evolution of methods to estimate the rate of medication error in anaesthesia

Abstract

The rate of medication errors in anaesthesia is a critical safety indicator but the methods to estimate this metric are imperfect. A number of factors that are difficult to control impact their incidence. Newer methods involving computerised records are improving retrospective and real-time monitoring of medication errors.

Keywords: black box; critical incident technique; dual data collection; human error; incident monitoring; medication error; trigger tools.