Anaesthesia
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There is an increasing recognition that medication errors are causing a substantial global public health problem, as many result in harm to patients and increased costs to health providers. However, study of medication error is hampered by difficulty with definitions, research methods and study populations. ⋯ Steps are being taken to determine the extent of the problem of medication error in anaesthesia. New technology, theories of human error and lessons learnt from the nuclear, petrochemical and aviation industries are being used to tackle the problem.
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Review Case Reports
Transient fixation on a non-native language associated with anaesthesia.
We report a patient with the unusual language disturbance of transient fixation on a non-native language after otherwise uneventful general anaesthesia. The patient was unable to speak his native language for a period of 5-10 min, despite a desire to do so. ⋯ The phenomenon raises a number of interesting questions about the nature of human language, anaesthesia and consciousness. We discuss our patient in the context of some of these questions and present a review of three similar patients reported in the anaesthetic literature.