ISMP Medication Safety Alert!®

Featured Articles

The articles listed below were featured in the ISMP Medication Safety Alert! newsletters. New articles are frequently published highlighting important medication safety information. Related articles can be found in the full newsletter publications. You can subscribe to the full newsletters here.

Browse Issues

On March 17, 2008, CBS aired a 60 Minutes segment featuring interviews with Dennis Quaid and his wife Kimberly Buffington who shared their thoughts about the medication errors that happened to their newborn twins in November 2007. The errors involved the accidental administration of heparin withdrawn from vials (manufactured by Baxter) containing a concentration of 10,000 units/mL rather than the intended flush concentration of 10 units/mL. According to Mr. Quaid, the 1,000-fold overdoses caused bleeding in both twins, but fortunately, there are no signs of permanent harm.

Similar errors...