New York residents may be aware of the fact that medication errors occur. However, one may not put much thought into just how often they happen, especially in children. Studies show that as many as 27 percent of medication orders for pediatric patients are wrong in terms of drug or dosage. This leads to roughly 7,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States due to a prescription error.
The good thing is that these medication errors can be fixed. However, it will take cooperation among health care professionals. A New York doctor and some of his colleagues looked at more than 60 studies to determine strategies that may reduce the number of errors and deaths.
One such strategy would be for prescription order sheets to be pre-printed. This makes prescriptions more legible and clear. Handwritten orders can be hard to read, which can ultimately lead to the wrong dosage or drug being given. This particular strategy was able to reduce errors by as much as 82 percent.
When a child is provided with the wrong drug or wrong dosage of a medication, it can lead to serious injury. In some cases, it may even result in that child's death. If a child is injured or killed as a result of a prescription error, legal action may be possible for the victim's family. A successful claim in New York may hold the medical professional responsible for their mistake while also awarding compensatory damages to assist in medical expenses, pain and suffering and other related damages.
Source: Business Insider, "Doctors find strategies to reduce medication errors among kids", Kathryn Doyle, July 14, 2014
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