Medication errors

Beyond ‘safety of supply’: a response to Harry McQuillan’s lecture

The emphasis placed by Harry McQuillan, chief executive of Community Pharmacy Scotland, on the need for community pharmacists in the UK to transition from an 'accuracy of supply' model to a 'safety of supply' model is certainly worthy of attention. However, I argue that we must not stop th…

How putting pharmacy technicians in charge of medicines administration cuts error rates

After introducing the role of medicines administration technician, the Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust is able to offer safer, more personalised patient care.…

Prescribing errors in children: why they happen and how to prevent them

Highlighting the potential causes of error when prescribing for children and outlining how pharmacists can support safer prescribing.…

Pharmacists on high-risk clinical wards reduce prescribing errors, evidence review finds

Researchers used data from 19 studies to identify the most common factors that increase the chance of prescribing errors.…

We audited our vancomycin patients, with some surprising results

When an audit of 25 patients found that none were given vancomycin in accordance with trust guidelines, Uwaise Rehman and colleagues uncovered a number of reasons why.…

Errors and the inappropriate use of medicines in UK care homes

Medication errors can have serious consequences for the residents of care homes, who are often older and in poor health. This systematic review investigates how common medication errors are in this setting.…

Drug shortages linked with medication errors, study results suggest

Data from the French Pharmacovigilance Database show that medication errors were identified in 11% of the 462 cases mentioning a drug shortage.…

Electronic prescribing systems should consider patients’ weight for supply of oral paracetamol, concludes report

The Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch issued the recommendation after a coroner concluded that a patient was prescribed a dose of oral paracetamol that was too high, which contributed to her death.…

Diabetes in hospital: could more specialist pharmacists reduce high error rates?

Error rates for insulin and diabetes medicines among hospital inpatients remain unacceptably high, yet there is a severe lack of specialist diabetes pharmacists across the NHS.…

Access to pharmacists at all times would reduce medication errors in hospital, concludes review

The review also said that wider implementation of electronic prescribing systems and an integrated electronic health record could help reduce errors.…