What drug names are frequently confused?
Drug names that can be confused, especially those names that look or sound alike, can increase the risk for medication errors. Errors involving these problematic name pairs may occur when a prescriber interchanges the two medications when writing an order, when someone misinterprets a written order, when a person taking a verbal order does not hear the order as intended, when selecting a medication when entering an order into a computer system or when obtaining medications from storage. A common contributor to these types of name mix-ups is what human-factors experts call confirmation bias (see FAQ #9). ISMP’s List of Confused Drug Names, which includes look-alike and sound-alike name pairs that have been involved in medication errors published in the ISMP Medication Safety Alert! ®. Errors involving these medications were reported to ISMP through the ISMP Medication Errors Reporting Program (MERP). The Joint Commission (TJC) has established a National Patient Safety Goal that requires
