Prescribing errors in children’s meds

RESEARCHERS investigating the causes of prescribing errors with children’s medicines describe the issues as “highly inter-related” and make a series of recommendations across four categories.

The UK study drew on MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL databases, grey literature and reference lists of included studies, filtered to 68 qualifying research papers.

Key distinguishing features of children’s medications were the number of individualised dosing calculations, the amount of off-label prescribing, issues around working with children, communication with children and the possible medication formulations specifically suited to children.

Recommendations were made across the categories of research needs, policy and drug industry level, practice elements and education requirements.

See bmjopen.bmj.com.