Clinical negligence risk highlighted over prescription errors

Posted 03/12/2009

A new General Medical Council (GMC) report has revealed that many UK patients are potentially being exposed to clinical negligence risks due to mistakes in prescriptions.

According to a study by the council, slightly less than nine per cent of the 124,260 it checked contained an error ranging from the minor to the potentially fatal.

The most serious errors noted were the prescription of dangerous dosages or treatments which failed to take into account serious allergic conditions.

The GMC stated that most of these errors were spotted and filtered out by nurses and pharmacists, but nevertheless called for a change in practices to eliminate the problem entirely.

Peter Rubin, chairman of the GMC, said: “It is important that a procedure is as simple as possible to minimise the chance of an error being made.”

This comes in the week that a new report for Dr Foster Intelligence revealed that an “unacceptable” variation exists in the quality of care offered by NHS trusts across the country.

Rosamund Rhodes-Kemp, a clinical negligence specialist at Ashtons Legal, said: “This is an unusually high figure for avoidable errors which can potentially cause serious injury or even death.

“We have handled a number of misprescription cases. One answer would be greater emphasis on the importance of writing prescriptions during medical training.”