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New Medication Errors Taxonomy Released March 15, 1999 — A new taxonomy for classifying medication errors has been released by the National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention (Council). The 17-member Council has worked on its "Taxonomy of Medication Errors" over a period of three years. This important tool has been designed to provide standard language and structure of medication error-related data for use in developing databases to analyze medication error reports. "Organizations can use this new tool to design both local and national error databases," said Council Chairman Deborah Nadzam, Ph.D., R.N. "Our hope is that this classification system eventually can be used to aggregate data from many health care organizations." The taxonomy's comprehensiveness reflects the complexity and system realities associated with medication errors. It consists of eight major categories: patient information medication error event patient outcome product information personnel involved type of medication error causes contributing factors Each category contains multiple fields and data choices. The taxonomy itself is not intended to be a reporting system or form but rather is a tool to categorize and analyze reports of medication errors for health care organizations with established reporting systems and forms. It also can be used to analyze medication error reports and abstract data elements. The taxonomy can be used to design local reporting forms and accompanying databases. A brief users' questionnaire included with the taxonomy will aid in identifying the need for future revisions. "In addition to USP, several other groups contributed significantly to development of the taxonomy, including the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists and the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists," said Diane D. Cousins, Council secretary and vice president for USP practitioner and product experience. "Each organization drew on years of experience from public and private medication error reporting database programs." The full, unaltered text of the taxonomy may be reproduced without special permission. Express permission of the Council is required if the taxonomy is modified, revised, paraphrased, or abstracted in any way. For permission, contact the Office of the Secretariat, U.S. Pharmacopeia (301/816-8215). For further information, contact Diane Cousins (ddc@usp.org). [Click here to view the Taxonomy. This requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.] © 1998–2008 National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention. All Rights Reserved. *Permission is hereby granted to reproduce information contained herein provided that such reproduction shall not modify the text and shall include the copyright notice appearing on the pages from which it was copied.