The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP), based in Horsham, Pennsylvania, has issued the latest updated version of their List of Confused Drug Names. It contains the most complete and updated list of drugs that routinely get confused with other similarly named medications.
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.”
ISMP has given healthcare organizations permission to reproduce this chart for posting in your pharmacies. It can be found on ISMP.org home page, in a 7-page Adobe file, under the Medication Safety Tools & Resources section, for: "Updated Confused Drug Name List” (if you cannot click on the hyperlink, the URL is: www.ismp.org/Tools/confuseddrugnames.pdf).
Name of Facility: Summerdale Enterprises, Inc., Founder of NPPA
