Addressing the risk of look-alike, sound-alike medication errors: bending metal or twisting arms? (7 May 2025)

Summary

What should we do in order to improve quality and safety in medicines management? How beneficial is it to design the medicines management system—for example, the tasks, tools and physical environment—to support effective working versus making people adapt to the systems in which they find themselves?

This question arises when considering, among other problems in healthcare delivery, that of confusing look-alike, sound-alike (LASA) medicine names, which persists as a threat to medication safety despite much discussion and examination. 

In this editorial, Denham L Phipps discusses the recent paper by Lambert et al who sought to validate a test battery for assessing the suitability of a given drug name on the basis of that name’s potential to be confused with others.

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