A new study found that out-of-hospital medication errors are common among children under six years old. These errors are often committed by either the parent or a caregiver, and are affecting one child every eight minutes.
Study senior author Huiyun Xiang and his colleagues from the Nationwide Children's Hospital looked at the 2002 to 2012 data from the National Poison Database System. Their analysis showed that 63,000 children were unintentionally put in danger due to common medications such as painkillers, fever, allergy and cough medicines.
The medications were administered by either a parent or a caregiver from the house, another home or in school. The incidents were recorded based on the calls received by the 55 U.S. poison control hotlines.
"This is more common than people may realize," said Xiang 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."
Researchers identified common medication errors such as over-medication or giving the medication twice, failure to follow dosage instructions and incorrect medication.
About 25 percent of the affected children were younger than one years old. During the study period, researchers noted 25 deaths due to medication errors.
Study co-author Henry Spiller suggested that parents and caregivers should not rush when providing medications.
"This is when a lot of these medication errors occur - during these distracted periods," he said, adding that parents should make sure they're giving the correct medication, the appropriate dose, and not giving a second dose.
"If you just take a moment, you can kind of save that mistake," Spiller said in a phone interview with Reuters Health.
Researchers recommended new strategies that could help reduce medication errors among young children, such as changing the packaging of the medications so that parents can quickly follow dosage instructions, and improving the labeling to make it more visible. Parents and caregivers can also use smartphone apps to schedule and track medication doses.
Results of the study were published in the Oct. 20 issue of Pediatrics.
