Concerns raised on high prescription errors in children

A study, carried out in 2005 by the Univeristy of London involving a children's hospital, 3 general teaching hospital and 1 non-teaching hospital in London, looked at prescription errors given to children in hospital. The study was published in Archives of Disease in Childhood.


During the study, pharmacists found 391 prescription errors and 429 administration errors in the 3000 prescriptions they exmined over a 2-week period. Errors included incomplete prescriptions, wrong dose, how the drugs should be prepared or how they should given to the patients. One mistake was picked up by the nurse, on 5 occasions, the researchers intervened to prevent the patient suffering the harm.

The researchers believe that their findings show a general picture across Britain and still stand today. The author said prescribing for children is very difficult because most drugs are formualted for adults, doctors have to calculate the dose for children. Much more needs to be done to improve prescribing to children.


They call for better education for doctors on prescription skills and electronic prescribing to be introduced in hospitals. See also post on GMC study on prescription errors in hospitals.

Source: "Minimising medication errors in children”Archives of Disease in Childhood 2009 ;94:161-164

Medication errors in cancer outpatients

A study published by the Journal of Clinical Oncology reviewed the records from visits to three adult clinics and one pediatric oncology clinic in America to determine the rates and types of medication errors and the factors associated with the errors in outpatients with cancer.

More than 10,000 medications were studied, errors were found in adult (7.1%) and in pediatric (18.8%) visits, more than half of the 112 medication errors had the potential to cause harm and 15 resulted in in injury. Most of the errors involved wrong does due to confusion over two sets of orders: at diagnosis and adjusted dose.

The authors wrote that with increasing opportunities for medication errors inthe home setting, better communication could prevent many of the errorrs and help improve cancer care for adults and children.

Source: "Medication Errors Among Adults and Children With Cancer in the Outpatient Setting" Journal of Clinical Oncology, 10.1200/JCO.2008.18.6072 (JCO Early Release, published online ahead of print Dec 29 2008)

Depressed junior doctors six times more likely to make mistakes

A Harvard team of researchers studied 123 paediatric residents at three children's hospitals in the USA to establish the prevalence of depression and burnout and whether medication errors are associated with these conditions.


They found that 20% of the participants were depressed and 74% were burned out, 45 medication errors were made. Depressed doctors in training made six times more medication errors than their non-deperessed peers, but burnout did not seem to link with a higher rate of medical errors.


In an accompanying editorial, the commentator cautioned against interpreting the findings and large studies are needed to study how individual factors correlate with medical errors.


Source: "Rates of medication errors among depressed and burnt out residents: prospective cohort study" BMJ 2008;0(2008):bmj.39469.763218.BEv1 (7 February)