The Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has recently said research shows that GP’s, pharmacists, hospitals and care homes may be making 237 million drug errors a year. These errors can include wrong medication, an incorrect dose or delays in medication being administered.
According to the research, around 700 deaths a year in England are caused by drug errors. The errors, however, could be contributing to between 1,700 and 22,000 deaths. It is estimated that 28% of the mistakes cause moderate or severe harm.
Jeremy Hunt has said medication errors are:
“…causing appalling levels of harm and deaths that are totally avoidable.”
“These are not just statistics – they are someone’s mum, child or partner suffering harm or tragedy when it didn’t need to happen.”
The Health Secretary has pledged to make various changes to address the problem and to make the UK a global leader in minimising medication errors. These include:
- Continuing the roll-out of electronic prescribing. This can give warnings of potential safety risks if drugs are contraindicated or if the dosage looks very high. Electronic prescribing has been shown to halve the error rate.
- Giving hospitals access to GP prescription data. This will enable hospital doctors to analyse if the drugs a patient has been taking has led to hospital admission.
- Introducing a change in the law so that pharmacists will not be prosecuted for owning up to genuine mistakes. It is believed that this will create greater openness.
Jeremy Hunt states:
“…part of the change needs also to be cultural: moving from a blame culture to a learning culture so doctors and nurses are supported to be open about mistakes rather than cover them up for fear of losing their job.”
Commenting on this, the Chief Executive of the Royal College of Nursing said:
“There is real problems in preserving patient safety when you haven’t got enough staff and when we’ve got the financial pressures we have.”
The Royal College of GP’s said mistakes can happen due to:
“…intense resource and workforce pressures, meaning that workloads and working hours are often unsafe for GP’s and our teams”.
Identifying the problem and strategies to minimise drug errors is certainly a step in the right direction. Part of the problem however is under-funding and the pressure this creates on front line services. Until this is addressed, patient safety will continue to be at risk.
How Nelsons Can Help
Please contact our Medical Negligence team on 0800 024 1976 or via our online form for more information.