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15/12/2011
Wrong Drug Story 'Alarmist'
Newspaper stories about the wrongful administering of drugs to elderly patients have been slammed as 'alarmist' by the NHS.
On Wednesday, The Telegraph ran a story on the findings of a report which they said found nearly four in ten doses of drugs were "wrongly administered to patients" by hospital staff.
The story, which was also published by Independent were based on a UK study looking at how nurses administered oral medicines to 679 patients with and without dysphagia (difficulty swallowing) on four stroke and care-of-elderly wards in the east of England.
The study had found that of the 2,129 medicine doses administered, 817 doses (38%) contained some type of error.
However, the NHS hit our at the stories saying that about three out of every four of these errors were “time errors”, when the drug was given more than one hour earlier or later than planned.
The NHS said it is not clear what, if any, adverse effects such errors might have had on patients and that the percentage of other errors was closer to 10%.
"Once time errors were excluded from the analysis, researchers found that drug errors were more likely to affect those with swallowing problems," an NHS spokesman said.
He added: "The media headlines were alarmist, as most implied the findings applied to all healthcare settings and to all medical patients. However, it is not clear whether this research, carried out in just four stroke and care-of-elderly wards in the east of England, applies to all healthcare settings in England."
(DW)
On Wednesday, The Telegraph ran a story on the findings of a report which they said found nearly four in ten doses of drugs were "wrongly administered to patients" by hospital staff.
The story, which was also published by Independent were based on a UK study looking at how nurses administered oral medicines to 679 patients with and without dysphagia (difficulty swallowing) on four stroke and care-of-elderly wards in the east of England.
The study had found that of the 2,129 medicine doses administered, 817 doses (38%) contained some type of error.
However, the NHS hit our at the stories saying that about three out of every four of these errors were “time errors”, when the drug was given more than one hour earlier or later than planned.
The NHS said it is not clear what, if any, adverse effects such errors might have had on patients and that the percentage of other errors was closer to 10%.
"Once time errors were excluded from the analysis, researchers found that drug errors were more likely to affect those with swallowing problems," an NHS spokesman said.
He added: "The media headlines were alarmist, as most implied the findings applied to all healthcare settings and to all medical patients. However, it is not clear whether this research, carried out in just four stroke and care-of-elderly wards in the east of England, applies to all healthcare settings in England."
(DW)
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