Making medication safer
Last year the number of people killed on roads in Britain dropped by 8 per cent to 3,221 while casualties fell 3 per cent to 280,840. The
road deaths figure was the lowest since records began in 1926, when
an astonishing 4,886 people were killed. These reductions are part
of the Government’s plans to reduce by 2010 the number of deaths
by 40 per cent (based on the average figures for 1994–95).
Does this have anything to do with pharmacy? Not directly, of course,
except that the the number of patients involved in medicines-related
errors each year is also a large figure. In addition, the Government
requested in 2001 that the number of medicines-related errors should
also be reduced by 40 per cent. With a target date of 2005, this is clearly
one objective that will not be met.
A similarity between the road accident and medication error statistics
is the fact that incidents mostly involve individuals or, in the case
of car accidents, two or three people. Only when individual incidents
involve numbers of people in double figures does the story become front-page
news. Imagine, however, the political impact if scores of people were
regularly killed as a result of one medication error.
However, in one sense, taking medicines is more like rail, sea or air
travel than driving a car. Passengers have to trust rail, ferry and air
operators to make sure they travel safely; they have little control over
the risks of those modes of transport which is why such a premium is
placed on safety.
Patients have little control over the safety of the medicines they take
or how they are prescribed, dispensed and supplied. But, as yet, the
safety aspects of medicine-taking are not considered in the league of
those commercial forms of transport.
However, as this week’s News
feature (p135) reveals in its coverage
of the initial activities of the National Patient Safety Agency, steps
are being taken to improve matters. But it could be argued that, with
the exception of some interesting initiatives, things seem to be moving
rather slowly. There still appears to be some reluctance to report errors — even
anonymously — although the fact that airline pilots have a statutory
responsibility to report errors is established to be the reason that
air travel is relatively so safe.
Maybe if all health care professionals who handle medicines — at
whatever stage of the process — looked upon themselves in the way
they regard pilots when they board an aeroplane, the 40 per cent target
reduction would be met sooner.
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