According to research in Quality and Safety in Health Care, inadequate medical data, overworked staff and poor teamwork are prompting the occurrence of these drug errors.
The authors of the report say their findings have come despite a government pledge in 2,000 to cut the number of drug errors following the publication of a report on medical issues.
The findings were based on a random sample of 256 residents in 55 care homes in West Yorkshire, Cambridgeshire and central London.
Each resident was taking around eight medicines each, with the researchers finding the average number of mistakes made with medication was just under two for each resident.
The potential risks were calculated using a scoring system, where 0 is no harm and 10 is death.
This ranged from 2.1 for the way in which the medicine had been given to 3.7 for the way in which the resident had subsequently been monitored. Almost a third of drugs which should have been monitored for potentially harmful side effects, were not.
The authors said: 'Management within each organisation was [also] a factor, particularly when challenged to deliver a safe service within a tight budget.
'Older people living in care homes are especially vulnerable to drug errors. This is because residents are usually taking a cocktail of medicines and are more susceptible to drug side effects as a consequence of ageing. They may also be confused or have dementia, which limits their capacity to register what they are being given.'
They added that the contributory factors included doctors who were either inaccessible, did not know the residents, or had insufficient background information on the resident's medical history when prescribing a medicine in a care home, as well as inadequate medicines training; interrupted drug rounds; poor team work between the care home, GP practice, and the pharmacy; poor record keeping; and complicated administrative systems.
No comments:
Post a Comment