Medication errors: reducing the harm

Errors can occur at any time in the process of prescribing,dispensing or administration by a range of different healthcare professionals and can cause considerable short term harm – or worse. Kate Woodhead RGN,DMS and Chris Shaw explore why extra vigilance is required to ensure Trusts are not making simple medication errors.

There is no particular universally agreed definition of medication error. Last year, The World Health Organization’s (WHO) latest Patient Safety Challenge was launched which aims to tackle medication-related harm.1 We can expect challenges to our practices and systems before too long. 

Their stated aim is to reduce the iatrogenic global burden of medication related harm by 50% within five years. A recent report from Sheffield’s School of Health and related Research (ScHARR) has revealed an estimated 237 million medication errors occur in the NHS in England every year and avoidable adverse drug reactions cause hundreds of deaths.2