Medication errors are particularly common in intensive care, paediatrics/neonatology, care of older adults, anaesthetics, and obstetrics. Errors can occur during prescribing, transcribing, dispensing, and administration of medicines. Some medication errors will result in overdose, adverse drug reactions, or under-treatment, and cause serious harm to patients. As more medicines enter the market, with greater variation in routes of administration, this problem is becoming increasingly complex.

A Swansea University led study explored the medication naming process to identify the reasons for confusion.

Speaking about the study, Swansea University PhD student Rachel Bryan said: “To our knowledge, this is the first study to contextualize the formal properties of International Nonproprietary Names (INNs) within the WHO naming guidelines and the first to explore the way names are grouped.” Sue Jordan, Reader in medicines’ management said: “Study of the formal characteristics of INNs is of real importance to those interested in medication management, look-alike and sound-alike (LASA) errors, and patient safety. Identification of the factors that should be considered in naming new medicines is important for products coming to market.”

The study group analysed 7,987 International Non-proprietary Names (INNs), in relation to naming guidelines of the World Health Organization (WHO) programme, and have identified potential for errors.

Since the 1970s there has been a trend towards compliance in formal properties, such as word length, but longer names published in the 1950s and 1960s are still in use. The guidelines do not consistently impose an order, making the meanings of medicines’ names difficult to understand. Similar drugs often have similar names, and thus have greater potential for confusion.

The study found that compliance with WHO naming guidelines was inconsistent and recommended that the stem system should be clarified and better ordered, so as to avoid risk of confusion at the clinical level. The  several different WHO INN naming principles should be further examined, to better understand their implications for the problem of look-alike sound-alike errors. “

The paper Patient Safety in Medication Nomenclature: Orthographic and Semantic Properties of International Nonproprietary Names has been published by PLOS one and can be found here :http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0145431 

Scientists involved in the study were:  Rachel Bryan, Alison Williams and Sue Jordan from Swansea University, Swansea, UK; Jeffrey K. Aronson from Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK  and Pius ten Hacken from the Institute for Translation Studies, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria.

The Swansea University Medical School, established in 2004, is an internationally-recognised centre of excellence in medical research, education and innovation.  The Medical School has three main activities: learning and teaching, research, and business and innovation. Read about the history of the Medical School at http://www.scribd.com/doc/235047725/History-in-the-Making-College-of-Medicine-Swansea-University-10th-Anniversary-2004-2014

Swansea University Medical School has had spectacular success in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014. Achievements include; joint 1st in the UK for research environment rated as 100% world-leading and 2nd in the UK for research quality in our unit of assessment, scored 100% world-leading in terms of impact and 95 % of the research submitted was assessed as world-leading (54%) or internationally excellent (41%) Find out more about the REF2014 results at https://www.scribd.com/doc/250478133/College-of-Medicine-results-in-the-Research-Excellence-Framework-REF-2014

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