Medication Errors in the under-18s

The Guardian reports that the NPSA have published their first review on patient safety among the under-18s. At least 60,000 young adults and children suffered medical errors. The excerpt below outlines some of the things that make the administration of medication problematic:

"She said nurses had to cut, crush and dissolve adult tablets and then make a difficult calculation of the dose needed by the child according to its weight.
"The doctor prescribes in milligrams but most children are given oral medicine in millilitres," she said. "Normally, the nurse has to make the calculation."
Getting the decimal point in the right place is essential, especially where the dose units have to be converted from milligrams to micrograms. A misplaced decimal point can mean a tenfold drug overdose or underdose."

Intuitively, it seems that performing multiple complex calculations involving quite variable weights in milligrams, millilitres and micrograms is vulnerable to error. Unfortunately the NPSA's data supports this.

Care Home Medication Errors

Excerpt from the website: "A study has found an “alarming” level of drug errors in care homes, The Guardian reported. The study in question looked at 256 elderly people from 55 care homes in England. The mistakes included errors in dosage and how the drugs should be taken."

Of the 256 elderly people in the study about 70% were found to have experienced medication errors. The potential harm that could be caused by these mistakes was low.

Amusing Hospital Signage

More lighthearted than usual posts: This is an amusing sign at Elhurst Emergency Trauma Center posted on failblog.