A study from the National Initiative for Children’s Healthcare Quality found that drug errors hurt approximately one out of every fifteen hospitalized children. That translates into more than five hundred thousand children harmed by drug errors every year — a number far higher than previous estimates.
What kind of drug errors are we talking about?
- Medicine mix-ups — giving the wrong drug to the wrong patient
- Accidental overdose — giving too much of a drug to a patient
- Bad drug reactions
Remember what happened to actor Dennis Quaid’s newborn children last year? They accidentally received a drug overdose but eventually recovered. It prompted the family to start a foundation that looks to prevent drug errors for hospitalized children.
For every story that makes the news, there are many more that don’t.
The National Initiative for Children’s Healthcare Quality developed a monitoring method that looks for fifteen different “triggers” on patients’ charts. (Traditional error reporting was largely random and/or voluntary.) Triggers include certain lab tests, unusual or suspicious side effects, and the use of certain antidotes for drug overdoses. More than half the drug errors the study found were related to painkiller overdose. Most of the drug errors found by the study were not life-threatening and nearly a quarter were considered preventable by study authors.
Patient safety experts think the actual number of drug errors may be even higher, because the study only looked at about a thousand charts from children across the country. It also focused on children’s hospitals — not general community hospitals.
Researchers would like to see more prevention strategies in place to reduce the risk of drug errors for children — and patients of all ages. Monitoring for triggers can help, as can voluntary error reporting by hospital personnel. The Institute for Safe Medication Practices would like to see a monitoring system that detects errors in time to prevent or reduce harm to patients.
Dennis Quaid suggests asking health care professionals what medications they are administering and what they are for before anything is given to your child.