Published 6 May 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b1814
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b1814

Letters

Parenteral drug errors

Reported error rates are likely to be underestimation

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The reported error rates in Valentin and colleagues’ study on errors in administration of parenteral drugs in intensive care units are likely to underestimate the true incidence of errors.¹

Firstly, errors were identified using self reporting by hospital staff. Only about 1 in 100 prescribing errors and 1 in 1000 administration errors are reported using established incident reporting systems.^{2 3} The error rate was 7% of all doses given, which is substantially lower than the error rates of 18-173% found in other studies in intensive care and other wards using the "gold standard" of independent observers.^{4 5}

Secondly, the authors assessed only five specific types of error. Other potentially common administration errors associated with parenteral treatment, including use of the wrong diluent, incompatibility errors, and wrong administration rates, seem to have been excluded. Conducting regression analyses on the basis of a potentially small subset of reported errors is therefore likely to be . . . [Full text of this article]

¹ Centre for Medication and Service Quality, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust/School of Pharmacy, University of London, London, ² Department of Pharmacy, Section of Pharmacotherapy and Pharmaceutical Care, University of Groningen, 9713BV Groningen, Netherlands, ³ School of Pharmacy, University of London, London WC1N 1AX

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