Home Medication Errors Are Common in Children with Chronic Illness

Children with chronic medical conditions often have complicated medication regimens. To describe the range of outpatient medication errors, a pediatrician or nurse at a single academic health center in Massachusetts reviewed labels and contents of prescribed medications and directly observed medication use in the homes of 24 children with sickle cell anemia and 28 children with seizures.

During home visits, the pediatrician or nurse reviewed 280 medications and identified 61 errors; 31 errors had potential for injury and 9 resulted in patient injury. Types and frequencies of errors were as follows: more than half of doses missed (26.0%), administration errors (25.0%), expired medications (16.0%), failure to collect prescription (16.0%), inco…