Close to ten per cent of UK hospital-issued prescriptions feature some sort of error, according to a new study. These errors range from non-serious to ones that could kill, albeit with relatively few of the latter, the study said, adding that doctors with experience were as likely to make mistakes as junior doctors.

The new study was carried out by a team of researchers spearheaded by the University of Manchester's Professor Tim Dornan. Those behind it assessed over 124,000 individual prescriptions supplied by 19 hospitals. Of those they looked at, close to nine per cent, 11,000+, were incorrect, but in the majority of instances, the mistakes were put right (by nurses, senior doctors or pharmacists), prior to the prescriptions being given to patients.

Prescription Errors

Approximately two per cent of the 11,000 prescription errors could have had fatal consequences, though, while in excess of 50 per cent involved a failure to provide the appropriate medication, whether on arrival, while in hospital or when departing. Despite the fact that the lion's share of errors were rectified in good time, there were fears that this intervention had almost become systemic, to the degree that it could be viewed as a guaranteed error-detector.

"The research shows the complexity of the circumstances in which errors occur and argues against education as a single quick-fix solution", Professor Dornan commented. "Education can always be improved but it must be very practically oriented and include all phases of a doctor's career as well as the undergraduate stage."

Prescribing Errors

British Pharmacological Society representative, Professor Simon Maxwell, said he was "extremely concerned" over the rate of prescribing errors, adding that he was "...dismayed at the suggestion that improved education and training" was not "a central part of the solution."

"There is plenty of evidence from around the world to show that when appropriate education and training are delivered, prescribing improves", he added, stressing that this shouldn't be the one key method of changing this prescribing practice, but that it was still important.