Every Eight Minutes, Children Are Given Medication Incorrectly

Recent findings conducted by researchers at the Nationwide Children's Hospital calculated that in children younger than six-years-old, parents or caregivers may produce a medication error for one child every eight minutes.

"This is more common than people may realize," said Huiyun Xiang, MD, MPH, PhD, director of the Center for Pediatric Trauma Research at Nationwide Children's Hospital, principal investigator at the hospital's Center for Injury Research and Policy, in a news release. "The numbers we report still underestimate the true magnitude of these incidents since these are just cases reported to national poison centers."

For the study, researchers first examined information on 63,000 children under six-years-old who were reported to the National Poison Data System, and looked at the number of medication errors that were made outside of the hospital every year from 2002 to 2012.

Findings revealed that every eight minutes, about one child is affected. Furthermore, the most commonly misused drugs were painkillers and fever-reducers, including ibuprofen and acetaminophen. More than 80 percent of the errors also involved liquid medications, while some of the mistakes also included administering the medication twice, measuring the wrong dose or even giving the wrong medication, flat-out.

While mistakes were more commonly made inside that home at around 97 percent, researchers found they were also made inside the school or residence, as well.

"We found that younger children are more apt to experience error than older children, with children under age one accounting for 25 percent of incidents," Xiang concluded. 

More information regarding the findings can be seen via the journal Pediatrics.