Nature of preventable adverse drug events in hospitals: a literature review

A literature review was conducted to identify the drug classes, types of errors, and types of adverse outcomes related to preventable adverse drug events (pADEs). Studies were identified by keyword search of MEDLINE and International Pharmaceutical Abstracts and by a manual search. The search was limited to peer-reviewed literature reporting pADEs in hospitalized patients and the frequencies of at least one pADE characteristic. The frequencies...