Children are getting the wrong medicine in hospitals

Errors are being made in a high number of drug treatments given to children whilst they are in hospital.

The mistakes are found to be occurring whilst prescribing or administering the medicines.

A small number of cases could have been fatal though the majority were unlikely to have caused serious harm.

A total of 391 prescribing errors picked up by pharmacists equalled an overall rate of one in eight mistakes.

The most common error was an incomplete prescription at 41 per cent and dosing errors made up 11 per cent.

Mistakes in administering the drugs totalled 429 errors making up an error rate of one in four.

Published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood, the findings come from a two-week study of data collected from 11 wards in five London hospitals in the year 2004/05.