Vaccine Administration Errors - Page 2

[wonderwahine]

not to mention the ones who ended up with menigitis after the vax................:

[lyttlewon]

Originally Posted by Momtezuma Tuatara

According to your medical literature, medical people in hospitals are responsible for 110,000 deaths.

About 400,000 people die yearly due to medication errors.

[schmaela]

I thought you all might get a out of this

I am a certified Pharmacy Technician. While I was in school to become a tech, we learned about medication errors and how to minimize them. Here are a few direct quotes from one of my textbooks:

"On the basis of a summary of several studies, Allan and Barker (1990) estimated that medication errors occur at a rate of about one per patient per day."

"Patients suffer from the unwanted effects of drugs. Such events are called medication misadventures." (the term was bolded in the textbook)

All of us students were flabbergasted by the frequency of errors and the fact that side effects were made to sound minor....medication misadventure? WTF? This is about the time I started to become quite disillusioned with the whole pharmaceutical industry :

[LongIsland]

Originally Posted by schmaela

"Patients suffer from the unwanted effects of drugs. Such events are called medication misadventures." (the term was bolded in the textbook)

http://www.ashp.org/bestpractices/Me..._Positions.pdf

[prairiechild]

The other thing you gotta remember is that the people who give these injections probably get the yearly flu vacc and so their cognitive functions are possibly somewhat decreased.

[wonderwahine]

Originally Posted by prairiechild

The other thing you gotta remember is that the people who give these injections probably get the yearly flu vacc and so their cognitive functions are possibly somewhat decreased.

that was wrong......but funny

[momto l&a]

Twas in the ER the other day for many hours and I got the pleasure of watching a nurse get meds out of a special cabinet connected to a computer.

The nurse would stop what she was doing and talk to somebody and then go back to what she was doing. All in all during the time I was there this happened many times.

IMO very disturbing. But I can see how that medication misadventures can happen.

[LongIsland]

Let's add Zostavax (shingles vaccine) and Tdap to the growing list of vaccine administration errors. These are one of many:

Zostavax instead of Varivax:

Information has been received from a physician and medical assistant concerning a 20 month old male who on 24 Oct 2004 was inadvertently vaccinated with a dose of varicella zoster virus vaccine (lot #652936/0981F) instead of varicella virus vaccine live. The medical assistant did not know there were two varicella vaccines and both vaccines were stored in the same place in the refrigerator. She reported, "it was just a mistake."


Tdap instead of DTaP:

Adacel and DTAP bottles look alike, no problems experienced by patient. Patient did have to receive 2nd injection same day, 2nd injection was DTAP.


You read that one right. The doc gave a three month old a dose of Tdap and a dose of DTaP on the same day, along with Hib, Hep B and IPV . . . and this winner ped also had the infant on Elidel eczema cream after the FDA advisory came out.

[PJsmomma]

:

[twinsplusone]

The one that has not left my mind is the 1.5 year old boy who was given GARDASIL instead of HepA.

[LongIsland]

You have to see the dozens of rotavirus errors --- some of them are giving the first dose at 6 months.

[LongIsland]

Originally Posted by twinsplusone

The one that has not left my mind is the 1.5 year old boy who was given GARDASIL instead of HepA.

The thousands of errors that come up are just the tip of the iceberg.

Can you just imagine if vaccine adminstration errors were required to be reported to VAERS?

[Cello]

Originally Posted by LongIsland

.

Keep in mind that a vaccine error is not required to be reported - this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Wow.

Is this on the federal level? So no states have more stringent guideline requiring report either?

[LongIsland]

Originally Posted by Cello

Wow.

Is this on the federal level? So no states have more stringent guideline requiring report either?

Not that I know of.

There's a specific list of federally mandated reportable events - vaccine error ain't one of them. Not even vaccine failure.

[mamakay]

Information has been received from a doctor of pharmacy concerning a 49 year old female hospitalized with pneumonia who on 1/14/05 was given a dose of pneumococcal 23v polysaccharide vaccine (lot # not reported) via a central line (the physician orders were to give it IM). Subsequently, the patient coded but did not die. The patient required intervention of the crash cart (therapies not specified). It was noted that the patient was to be discharged from the hospital that day, but her hospital stay would now