Background: In the past 10 years, medication errors have come to be recognised as an important cause of iatrogenic disease in hospital patients.
Aims: To determine the incidence and type of medication errors in a large UK paediatric hospital over a five year period, and to ascertain whether any error prevention programmes had influenced error occurrence.
Methods: Retrospective review of medication errors documented in standard reporting forms completed prospectively from April 1994 to August 1999. Main outcome measure was incidence of error reporting, including pre- and post-interventions.
Results: Medication errors occurred in 0.15% of admissions (195 errors; one per 662 admissions). While the highest rate occurred in neonatal intensive care (0.98%), most errors occurred in medical wards. Nurses were responsible for most reported errors (59%). Errors involving the intravenous route were commonest (56%), with antibiotics being the most frequent drug involved (44%). Fifteen (8%) involved a tenfold medication error. Although 18 (9.2%) required active patient intervention, 96% of errors were classified as minor at the time of reporting. Forty eight per cent of parents were not told an error had occurred. The introduction of a policy of double checking all drugs dispensed by pharmacy staff led to a reduction in errors from 9.8 to 6 per year. Changing the error reporting form to make it less punitive increased the error reporting rate from 32.7 to 38 per year.
Conclusion: The overall medication error rate was low. Despite this there are clear opportunities to make system changes to reduce error rates further.