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Pediatric medication error rate is shockingly high

On Behalf of | Jan 30, 2015 | Failure To Diagnose |

Medical professionals are going to make mistakes, regardless of their position or how much experience they have. They are human, after all, and thus they are bound to make these mistakes. The difference is that when they make a mistake, it can lead to the death of a patient; or it could change someone’s life; or it could make a medical condition far worse than it should have been. Obviously they aren’t trying to make these mistakes, and they are highly trained so these mistakes are less likely to happen — but they still occur.

However, you would think that medical professionals would be especially careful with kids. But a new study finds that, at least with medications, pediatric care is still riddled with medical errors.

The study found that 63,358 medication errors occurred in children aged 6 or younger, which averages out to one medication error every eight minutes in this country. Worse still, about a quarter of these medication errors occurred with children no older than 12 months. And as if it couldn’t get any worse, some people say the situation is far worse because these statistics were gathered from poison control reports. How many medication errors are going unnoticed or unreported to poison control?

Even the most highly trained and highly skilled people make mistakes. They complicated nature of their job and the industry they work in is irrelevant. And when these mistakes are made, people can be hurt or killed. When this unfortunately happens, the victim and his or her loved ones need to consider legal action.

Source: Anesthesiology News, “New Study Finds High Rate of Pediatric Med Errors,” Jan. 5, 2015

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