Children Victims of Too
Many Medical Errors
In a report from the April 25, 2001 Journal of the
American Medical Association (JAMA) and reported on the WebMD web site,
comes an alarming report of research on the high incidence of medical
errors effecting hospitalized children. According to the study
researchers looked at 1,120 children admitted to two teaching hospitals
during the spring of 1999. They
reviewed almost 11,000 orders for medications and found 616 errors which
translates into a 6% error rate.
According to the study most of these errors were relatively small
resulting from clerical problems. However, alarmingly 115 of them
could have potentially lead to harm, and 26 actually did lead to harm to
the children. In as much as previous studies have shown an alarmingly high
rate for medical errors overall, this recent study shows that the number
of potential problems was three times higher in children as compared to a
previous study of medical errors in adults.
Study author Rainu Kaushal, MD, an instructor at Harvard Medical
School, says, "Children pose unique challenges. Unlike adults, almost
all pediatric drug doses must be specially calculated. Pharmacists often
have to dilute stock solutions to make them suitable for children. When a
error occurs, very small, very sick children may not have the internal
buffers needed to deal with even a small dosing error."
Leon Wyszewianski, PhD, an associate professor of health management and
policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health commented on
a solution, "Lowering the error rate is not just a matter of getting
physicians to change their ways. We have to change the systems that
surround them. We have to hold administrators and managers accountable for
solving problems like this."
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