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What is a drug error? Well, the Department of Health informs us that:

A medication error is any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is in the control of health professional, patient, or consumer.

Because nurses predominately administer drugs, they are often the last potential barrier between a medication error and serious harm to a patient, with drug errors frequently featuring in professional misconduct cases.

It is estimated that there are more than 230 million medication errors per year in the National Health Service (NHS). The cost to the NHS was estimated at £98.5 million for the 712 confirmed deaths from drug errors in hospital. However, if we add on the extra cost of patients made seriously ill, or potentially killed by drug errors in primary care, the estimated cost to the NHS is £1.6 billion (yes – billion!) equating to 3.8 million bed days.

So, why do drug errors occur? Well, we have been informed from the same report giving us the facts and figures above that they occur due to:

 Failure to properly monitor patients on powerful drugs,

 Poor communication between general practitioner (GP)'s and hospitals,

 Giving patients the wrong medication.

We also know that mistakes happen due to:

 Drugs that look or sound alike,

 High staff workload,

 Low staffing levels,

 Inexperienced staff.

As a means to combat some of these medication errors, the UK government pledged an investment of £75 million to implement electronic prescribing in hospitals.