Children's ward drug errors warning
Tuesday January 19th, 2010
One in five drug prescriptions in children's wards may be administered wrongly by nurses, researchers warned today.
And a significant number of the prescriptions are likely to be wrong in any case - some 13 per cent, according to the study of five hospitals in London, UK.
The findings reflect concern about the quality of drug administration in hospitals - but experts warned they were higher than in adult wards.
Researchers said a "small number" of the cases studied could have been lethal.
For the research, published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood, some 3,000 prescriptions were analysed by a pharmacist.
And an "experienced observer" watched nurses administer drugs in more than 1,500 cases.
Of the 391 erroneous prescriptions, the pharmacists said 41 per cent were incomplete and about 25 per cent used abbreviations, which could be misunderstood.
Some 11 per cent involved the wrong dose.
About ten per cent of the administration errors by nurses involved dosing errors - and on five occasions the nurse had to be stopped by the observer to prevent harm.
The researchers, led by Professor Ian Wong, of University College, London, UK, said: "The results are likely to be generalisable to other UK clinical environments."
Dr William Van't Hoff, chair of the medicines committee, of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said the findings were "very concerning" and called for more training.
He said: "The error rate in prescribing or administering medicines to children is higher than in adults and reflects the complexity of medicine.
"There is a need for more research into the causes of these errors and training to prevent mistakes being made.
"As many drugs given to children are used unlicensed it is also important that we continue to develop better ways of giving medicines specifically for children. This will reduce the error rate and improve the safety and efficacy of the treatments."
Archives of Disease in Childhood online 2010; doi 10.1136.adc.2009.158485
Tags: Child Health | NHS | Nursing & Midwifery | Pharmaceuticals | UK News
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