Consumer Guide to Health Care

Get the Safest Health Care

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Your role in preventing medical errors

Medical errors are more common than many people realize. According to a report from the Institute of Medicine, at least 44,000 and perhaps as many as 98,000 people die in American hospitals each year from preventable medical errors.  Errors in doctors' offices, pharmacies and nursing homes add to this toll.

The good news is that as a health care consumer, you can take steps to prevent medical errors.  The federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has published these guides to help you protect yourself in different health care settings.

• Patient safety tips
  
  
• Five steps to safer health care
  
  
• Ways you can help your family prevent medical errors
  
  
• 20 tips to prevent medical errors in children
  
  

Safety in the hospital

• General information on protecting yourself in the hospital  is available from Virginians Improving Patient Care and Safety.
  
  
• Speak Up: Help Prevent Errors in Your Care (PDF, 154 KB) from The Joint Commission includes steps you can take to prevent errors in the hospital.
  
  
• Tips for patients to prevent wrong site surgery, also from The Joint Commission.
  
  
• Preventing Infections in the Hospital from the National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF).
  
  
• Safety As You Go from Hospital to Home (PDF, 287 KB), also from NPSF.

Medication safety

Medication mistakes can occur for many reasons. You can help prevent some of these errors by keeping informed, communicating with your health care providers and pharmacists, and speaking up about any questions or concerns you have.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has a number of helpful guides:

• Be an active member of your health care team can help you reduce the risks related to using medicines and get the maximum benefit from your medicines.
  
  
• Tips for taking medicines: Advice on how to take and store your medicines, children and medicines, and protecting yourself from drug tampering.
  
  
• Over-the-Counter Medicines: What's right for you: Information from the FDA and the Consumer Healthcare Products Association about how to safely use over-the-counter medication.
  
  
• Reporting Problems: Steps to take if you experience a serious reaction or problem with a drug.
  
  

Other useful sites to help you avoid medication mistakes include:

• Drug Information: A comprehensive listing of specific drugs from the National Institutes of Health. You can use this site to look up a particular medicine to find out what conditions the medicine might treat, precautions to follow when taking the medicine, possible side effects, and how to store the medicine.
  
  
• Drug interactions: What you should know: Information from the Council on Family Health (a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating consumers) on how the effectiveness of the medicines you are taking can be affected by other drugs, illnesses you have, and even some foods and beverages.
  
  
• Medications and You: Information from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists on medication safety, poison prevention, traveling with your medicines and emergency preparedness and medications.

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Last Modified: July 01, 2008