80,000 AUSTRALIAN VICTIMS A YEAR OF WRONG MEDICATION

An estimated 80,000 people are admitted to hospital each year as a result of being given the wrong medication or incorrect doses.

Hospitals around the country will now be asked to reduce by up to half the number of potentially fatal mistakes they make with patient medications.Just over 10 percent of mistakes made by doctors and nurses in hospitals and surgeries involve patients being given the wrong medication or overdoses.

Some patients have died after being given the wrong treatments or the wrong doses of drugs, including morphine, potassium chloride or blood thinners such as warfarin.

A national taskforce is now preparing to enlist up to 40 hospitals around the country in an attempt to reduce the number of medication errors by up to 50%. Other initiatives will include new electronic prescribing services and encouraging patients to inject their own drugs to help reduce errors.

Dr David Brand, co-chair of the Medication Safety Taskforce, a sub-group of the Australian Council for Safety and Quality in Health Care, yesterday said an estimated 80,000 hospital admissions each year were the result of adverse drug events, which cost the health system $350 million.
Daily Telegraph (Australia), 3rd November 2001, p.3.