Adverse drug events in the critical care unit

Mistakes and errors may occur during the care process, particularly in the ICU as characterized by its large number of drugs administered to the single patient. One of the most important influencing factors on intramural morbidity and mortality is indeed a harmful or unpredicted reaction to a drug, a so-called adverse drug event (ADE) [1]. By far the largest proportion (70%) of these ADEs is dose related [1]. The objectives of this study are to measure the frequency and severity of ADEs in the ICU and to determine the influence of severity of illness and nursing workload on their prevalence.