Pediatric patients are at risk for medication errors during inpatient hospital stays but also in their own homes.
From the CDC:
Findings from national data suggest 4 things busy clinicians can tell parents and older children about using medicines safely.
1.Among children, unintended medication overdoses (rather than allergic reactions or side effects) are the most common cause of serious harm and lead to more than 70,000 emergency department visits every year.
2.It is not errors by clinicians that cause most of these overdoses — 80% are caused by unsupervised ingestions in the home, typically by 2-year-olds. One of every 180 2-year-olds is brought to an emergency department for a medication overdose.
3.Dosing errors by parents cause fewer pediatric emergency visits (approximately 10% of medication overdoses) — but certain dosing errors can cause serious harm, particularly for infants and toddlers.
4.Approximately 10% of emergency visits for nonabuse overdoses involve innocent (but misguided) attempts by pre-adolescents and teens to self-treat pain or other symptoms with high doses of medicines. Pre-adolescents and teenagers may not appreciate the consequences of taking high doses of medicine, particularly of over-the-counter medicines.
One of every 180 2-year-olds is brought to an emergency department for a medication overdose? How scary is that statistic????
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