The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 280 No 7490 p206
23 February 2008

This article
Reprint   Photocopy

  Acrobat Reader

News summary

Inaccurate weighing scales could be risking lives

Inaccurate weighing scales in hospitals could be putting patients’ lives at risk, according to trading standards officers, after a series of pilot studies found that hospital staff were using results from inaccurate and unsuitable scales to calculate doses for medicines.

Local Authority Co-ordinators of Regulatory Services (LACORS), the national co-ordinating body for council trading standards services, is now launching the “National medical weighing project”, which will start in April 2008 and run for one year.

Trading standards officers across the UK will work with their local NHS trusts to inspect all hospital weighing equipment and make sure it is accurate, legal and fit for purpose.

Currently, it is not uncommon to find wards with domestic scales brought from home, says LACORS in a report outlining the project. It adds: “Some wards, for example oncology, are unwittingly using two classes of machine to calculate doses when only one is appropriate.” Only class III machines will give sufficiently precise readings, it says.