Medication errors can be common among medical trainees. Using semi-structured qualitative interviews, this study identified factors influencing suboptimal prescribing by medical residents during overnight coverage, including time pressures, perceived pressure and fear of judgement, clinical acuity, and communication issues between care team members.

The overprescribing of opioids for postsurgery pain can increase the potential for opioid dependence, misuse, and harm. Discussing this worldwide patient safety concern, this commentary summarizes clinician, patient, and systemic factors that contribute to the problem and outlines efforts to address the issue while enabling clinicians to provide safe pain therapy to patients.

… of surgery … Ann Surg … The large surge in opioid use is a serious patient safety problem. This retrospective study … opioid overdose increased over time. Patients with a substance abuse history were more likely to experience a postoperative opioid overdose, but hospital characteristics …

Given increasing rates of overdose related to opioids, providers' prescribing behavior has come under greater scrutiny. Researchers examined opioid prescribing by dentists after surgical tooth extraction for a cohort of Medicaid patients and found significant variation in the amount of medication prescribed. They suggest that dental care should be one of the areas that is considered when implementing programs to decrease opioid use.

This study found that safety information provided with common prescription medications varies widely across different countries. For instance, medication documents in Canada reported approximately 50% more adverse drug reactions than comparable records in the United States.

Pharmacy-issued medication containers frequently did not highlight instructions or consistently use warning labels. Labels also varied considerably between different pharmacies.

This commentary discusses the recent controversy regarding adverse events associated with several commonly prescribed drugs such as rofecoxib and aprotinin, and recommends publicly funded evaluations of drug safety in order to prevent patient harm.

The researchers compared data from published clinical trials to evaluate adverse effects and discontinuation rates in placebo groups versus symptom rates in the general population.

… Archives of internal medicine … Arch Intern Med … Using a computerized provider order entry system, … psychotropic medication to elderly patients at a tertiary care academic hospital. Results indicate increased …