BANs to rINNS

Abstract

Summary Medical errors are increasingly being highlighted as an unnecessary cause of morbidity and mortality. Such situations are increasingly likely to occur if each country has its own improved name for each individual drug, particularly as healthcare staff are becoming increasingly mobile across the world. Standardization of drug names will help reduce the risk of such errors. However because of the change between BANs and rINNS there is potential for short‐term problems. Healthcare staff need to be aware of such problems to try and minimize the damage they could potentially cause. In the longer term these name changes will hopefully prevent errors from occurring.

An Intervention to Reduce the Use of Error‐Prone Prescribing Abbreviations in the Emergency Department

“…1,4,5 Although many authors have highlighted the problem of error-prone abbreviations, interventions to reduce this potential for error have not been published. [6][7][8][9][10][11] The Institute of Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) has compiled a list of error-prone abbreviations, symbols and dose designations from error reports submitted to its database. 12 The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organisations (JCAHO) has also published a list of 'do not use' abbreviations as part of their patient safety goals.…”