Concerns raised over drug treatments for children

Serious concerns have been brought up regarding the number of mistakes being made in drug treatments administered to children in hospitals.

New research published in Archives of Disease in Childhood claimed that errors are being made in a high number of treatments, either when prescribing or administering medicines.

The prescription errors were picked up by pharmacists reviewing the drug charts of ten wards, while administration errors were picked up by an experienced observer.

During the study, pharmacists reviewed almost 3,000 prescriptions intended for 444 children.

Overall, 391 errors were made, constituting an overall rate of 13.2 per cent.

The most common mistake – 41 per cent – was an incomplete prescription, with dosing errors the third most common type of problem.

Commenting on the report, Liberal Democrat shadow health secretary Norman Lamb said: “Ministers’ priority must now be to ensure that children are properly protected. We must also find out why so few of these mistakes are being identified and reported.”