By JB

In January 2017 PLOS Medicine published research on….Patient Safety Incidents Involving Sick Children in Primary Care in England and Wales: A Mixed Methods Analysis

PLOS Medicine as a journal was published online and in a printed format until 2005 and is now only published online by the Public Library of Science under the  Creative Commons “attribution” license  in other words “open access content”.

“Articles published in PLoS Medicine are rigorously peer-reviewed. Academic and professional editors, supported by expert peer-reviewers, select those studies that drive research forward—in this case, toward medical applications and benefits for patients.”

Getting back to the main headline, this research although not about hospital care is very much about NHS primary care, GP’s, Clinics, Community Pharmacies, Dental and Optometry Services in England and Wales.

 Although all of the report is relevantly illuminating one section did stand out….

“Treatment of Sick Children with Medication

The 674 medication-related incidents (primary and contributory; harmful and nonharmful) were described in the home (e.g., from NHS 111 service calls), general practice, and community pharmacy settings. Most incidents (n = 386; 57%) were related to dispensing errors in community pharmacies; other medication incidents were administration errors (n = 123; 18%) typically in the home setting, prescribing errors (n = 68; 10%) in the general practice setting, and clinical treatment decision-making incidents (n = 66; 10%) in the general practice or out-of-hours setting (Table 1).

Children less than 1 y old were most frequently (n = 131; 19%) involved in reported medication-related incidents, and these children were largely being treated for epilepsy, asthma, and infections (Table 4). As highlighted in Table 4, inhalers for asthma treatment were frequently involved in medication-related incidents: for example, children were dispensed the wrong dose inhaler (n = 27), the wrong brand (n = 18), or the wrong inhaler medication (n = 16). Children with epilepsy were frequently dispensed the wrong dose of anticonvulsant (n = 27) or dispensed anticonvulsants with the wrong instruction labels (n = 11). Errors involving antimicrobial treatment were related to dispensing the wrong dose (n = 13), the wrong medication (n = 22), or medications with incorrect labels (n = 13).”

This is not meant as a defence of someone in NHS Scotland making an absolutely horrific mistake. They are meant to have another person double check for correct medicine and dosage at the patients bedside, I think they call it the 5 R’s….Right Patient, Right Drug, Right Route, Right Time and more importantly, Right Dose.

My point is that the Scottish “media” spotlight, illuminate every single thing, especially about our NHS, for political gain all to preserve their union. The Scottish Government or more’s the point the SNP always get the blame. Was an SNP MSP or MP in the theatre during this operation? I would say 100% no.

This is obviously a regular occurrence in England and Wales, according to the research but no politician or government are ever blamed.

In using this awful event, especially where a baby is concerned, as political propaganda the BBC in Scotland and British Labour in Scotland have sunk to a new depth depravity!!!

JB

Source: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002217#pmed-1002217-t003