Medication errors too common in child inpatients
January 20, 2010 by admin
Both prescribing and medication errors are common in paediatric inpatients in the UK according to a recent study.
It is therefore important to develop strategies to reduce paediatric medication errors and future research should concentrate on this.
The researchers looked at drug errors in five hospitals in London and found that about 13.2% of the medication orders written contained an error and that medication administration errors were even more common. The error rate could be higher than in adults.
A small number of the errors detected were potentially fatal although most were unlikely to cause serious harm. The wards studied included some in a specialist children’s hospital as well as some in teaching and non-teaching general hospitals. The error rates varied widely between settings and the data do not reveal why this should be so.
Prescribing errors: moving on from indifference and denial
December 19, 2009 by admin
After years of indifference and denial about standards of prescribing, a corner has now been turned, according to the British Pharmacological Society (BPS). It says most professionals now agree that standards of prescribing must be improved and sets out plans to do so.
Commenting on the recent report from the GMC, the BPS asks why, when four out of five of its recommendations centred on education, this was not given greater emphasis?
The BPS solutions are:
- Improving education: a national eLearning project with the Department of Health and medical schools; more opportunities for prescribing practice in training; promoting return of pharmacological and other sciences into higher education.
- Setting improved standards and assessing them: medical student prescribing curriculum already agreed and implemented; working now on a national prescribing assessment tool for final-year medical students.
- Providing professional guidance: launched the BPS ‘Principles of Good Prescribing’.
- Fostering collaboration.
- Improving the system: the introduction of a national prescription sheet for use throughout all hospitals; discussion about electronic prescribing, improved decision support and supervisory structures in first years of training.
The introduction of a prescribing assessment would aim to show that agreed standards of competence have been met before graduation.
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