Drug Reactions

Adverse drug events, also known as ADE, is an umbrella term for any medication-related incident. Two types of medication-related incidents are adverse drug reactions (ADRs) and medication errors.

Adverse drug reaction, also known as ADR, is a type of adverse drug event where a medication harms the individual it is prescribed to. An example of this would be someone having an allergic reaction and getting hives after taking an antibiotic. If the medication were prescribed and administered following the guidelines and some adverse event occurred anyway, it would be considered an adverse drug reaction.

Medication error is also an adverse drug event; however, this event occurs when an accident is made during any step of the process. Whether the prescribed dose was too high, it wasn’t stored correctly, taken as prescribed, and so on. This category is any error along the way that harms the individual taking the medication.