Скачать или смотреть Medication Errors Happen Every 8 Minutes In Kids

From double-dosing to wrong meds, study is first to track mistakes made by adults

(COLUMBUS, Ohio) – Just in time for cold and flu season, a newly published study is showing how often adults make mistakes when giving medication to children. The study, led by researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital found that medication errors occur in a child every 8 minutes in the U.S., on average, and the numbers are inching up.

“These are unintentional errors where caregivers either give a child too much medicine at once, both parents accidentally give a dose or, in some cases, they give the wrong medicine,” said Dr. Henry Spiller, a physician and Director of the Central Ohio Poison Center at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

Spiller says cases tend to spike during the winter months and most often involve analgesics, used to control fevers. “Many times the packaging causes confusion. Some measuring cups or syringes are marked in teaspoons others are measured in milliliters and almost all of them use small, hard-to-read numbers and dosing levels,” he said.