First Do No Harm — Avoiding Medication Errors in Children

Medication errors are among the most common causes of adverse events in hospitalized patients. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations recently issued a Sentinel Event Alert about the high risk for medication errors in children. Data reported in the April issue of Pediatrics demonstrated a mean of 11 adverse drug events per 100 randomly selected patients from 12 children’s hospitals, 16 events per 1000 patient-days, and 1 event per 1000 medication doses. Twenty-two percent of the errors were classified as preventable, and 2.5% led to patient harm.

Medication errors are especially problematic in children for a variety of reasons, including that many drugs are formulated for adults, many healthcare settings do not hav…