Report recommends safety regulation of technology systems to tackle weight-based medication errors

This is the finding of our national investigation focused on weight-based medication errors in children.

The reference event we examined to highlight the impact of the safety risks involved Felicity, a four-year-old girl who was given 10 times the intended dose of dalteparin (a blood thinner) five times over the course of one weekend. A subsequent CT scan showed she had a bleed on the brain, which could have been contributed to by the medication.

Prescribing errors

Studies show that prescribing errors are the most frequent type of medication error in children’s inpatient settings. Prescribing medications for children is complex because prescriptions must be tailored to the individual child based on several parameters such as weight, age, gestation and body surface area.

Our investigation examined the patient safety risks that relate to prescribing medications to children and our findings cover three areas:

• Implementation of ‘off the shelf’ electronic prescribing systems.
• Co-ordination of multi-disciplinary teams and decision making.
• Checking of medication.

‘Off the shelf’ electronic prescribing systems

Six of the 16 findings were focused on the implementation of ‘off the shelf’ electronic prescribing systems in specific contexts, particularly in paediatric prescribing. A significant finding was that some electronic prescribing and medicines administration systems may not currently be registered as medical devices in line with the Medical Device Regulations 2002, despite meeting the criteria.

As a result of this finding, we have recommended that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) works with the manufacturers of electronic prescribing and medicines administration (ePMA) systems to provide guidance on their obligations under the Regulations, if their systems meet the criteria for a medical device.

We have also made a safety observation suggesting that manufacturers of ePMA systems conduct assessments of their products against the relevant regulations, to identify whether they meet the definition of a medical device and if so, to ensure associated regulatory requirements are met.

Co-ordination of multi-disciplinary teams and decision making

A further five findings in the report examined the theme of co-ordination of multi-disciplinary teams and decision making. For example, identifying that email discussions may be being used for discussion of critical decisions in relation to patient care, with limited dissemination to the wider team.

Checking of medication

Another five findings focused on understanding the factors which contribute to reduction in the effectiveness of checking of medication as a barrier. For example, environmental layouts and limited resource resulted in workarounds.

Alongside the safety recommendation made to MHRA, others were made focusing on identifying best-practice principles for paediatric ward rounds:

• Assessing whether future research on processes for second checking medication would be feasible and add value.
• Clarifying to organisations their responsibilities for digital clinical safety.
• Reviewing whether a provider’s assurance of its compliance with the Clinical Risk Management standard can form part of the Care Quality Commission’s regulatory model.