Medication errors in infants at home

Ojha, Shalini; Choonara, Imti

Abstract

The study by Solanki and colleagues involved interviewing 166 parents/grandparents at home regarding the medications that had been prescribed at discharge to their infants, by the hospital staff [1]. As part of the study, the parents were also asked to demonstrate how much medicine they would give. With this methodology, Solanki et al. estimated that two out of three of the infants in their study would have experienced medication errors at home. This is an alarmingly high proportion of medication errors. Fortunately, none of the infants experienced significant harm. The authors have suggested that this high rate may be due to lack of parental education and inadequate pre-discharge counselling. The study was performed in Pondicherry in India. It would be wrong, however, to dismiss the relevance of their findings when considering the possibility of medication errors among neonates discharged from centres from high income countries, such as the U.K.

Citation

Ojha, S., & Choonara, I. (in press). Medication errors in infants at home. Archives of Disease in Childhood, 102, https://doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2017-313007

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 25, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Sep 20, 2017
• Deposit Date: Oct 18, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 18, 2017
• Journal: Archives of Disease in Childhood
• Print ISSN: 0003-9888
• Electronic ISSN: 1468-2044
• Publisher: BMJ Publishing Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 102
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2017-313007
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/883870
• Publisher URL: http://adc.bmj.com/content/102/10/947