Medication errors: Not just a "few bad apples"

• Objective: To describe the distribution of medication errors among physicians. • Design: Prospective cohort study. • Participants and setting: 24 physicians from 4 adult primary care practices in Boston, MA. • Measurements: The principal measure was total medication errors per physician. The number of prescriptions written during the study period was also tabulated. • Results: 22 of the 24 physicians made at least 1 error. Although there was 1 outlier, the error rate among this cohort of physicians was evenly distributed. • Conclusion: The wide distribution of errors among this group of physicians undermines the argument that the majority of medication errors are due to a "few bad apples".