FIVE hospital patients a day are put at risk as a result of blunders over drug prescriptions, an investigation by Scotland on Sunday has revealed.
Serious errors included a baby being given the MMR jab before the recommended minimum age, and a pregnant woman given drugs that can cause birth defects.
Scotland on Sunday used Freedom of Information laws to obtain details of prescription mistake
s for the past three years, establishing that each year on average almost 2,000 "medication incidents" are logged, including overdoses, wrong drugs, "near misses" and missed doses.
The problems include:
&149 More than 100 mistakes a month over three months in the NHS Lothian area, including prescribing errors, delays and paperwork blunders;
&149 A total of 539 drug errors in the Tayside area in three years;
&149 A female patient in Fife who was prescribed a sedative in such a high dose that it would have killed her if she had taken it;
• A doctor in the same area who reportedly said he "couldn't be bothered" checking a medicine dose.
Last night experts warned many of the mistakes are being made because of the "frantic" workload in hospitals. But patients' groups said it was vital that better care was taken.
Only two boards, NHS Forth Valley and NHS Fife, provided full details of mistakes as well as the number of errors. The accounts shed new light on problems which are likely to be occurring across the country.
In Fife, they included one incident in which staff nurses discovered a total of 39 different mistakes had been made on the previous shift, including incorrect doses of insulin and antibiotics.
In another case in Fife, a patient was given Tramadol, a powerful painkiller, despite wearing a red band to warn of an allergy to the drug.
And in yet another case in the same area, a patient had to wait seven-and-a-half hours in pain because doctors failed to provide nurses with the drugs history they needed before giving him painkillers.
The cases revealed by NHS Forth Valley include that of a baby given the MMR vaccine in error under the recommended minimum age of 12 months.
In other cases, a pregnant woman was given Trimethroprim, an antibiotic which can cause birth defects if taken during pregnancy, and a cancer patient was given an overdose of chemotherapy drugs.
Also in NHS Forth Valley, several patients with known allergies to penicillin received the medicine before the errors were spotted by staff.
NHS Lothian appears to have the highest rate of mistakes in Scotland at 320 in three months alone. Health chiefs at the board claim their recording systems are more sensitive than those used in other areas, and said just 52 of the mistakes related to prescribing errors, the others to paperwork and delays.
Over the three-year period from 2005 to 2008 there were a total of 539 drug errors in Tayside, 300 each in Glasgow and Ayrshire and Arran, 295 in Lanarkshire, 130 in Grampian and 106 in the Borders. There were 89 in Fife, 85 in Forth Valley and three in Shetland. Figures were not available for Highland, Orkney and Western Isles. NHS Dumfries and Galloway reported 39 errors in one year.
Hospitals last night insisted that strict protocols are followed when a mistake comes to light, and pointed out that some incidents may be recorded more than once. The data also includes "near misses" in which no one is harmed.
However, the revelations follow a number of serious mistakes that have emerged in recent years, including that of teenager Lisa Norris, who died after receiving a radiation overdose at the Beatson Oncology Centre in Glasgow.
Margaret Watt, chairwoman of the campaigning charity Scotland Patients' Association, said NHS staff are often under huge pressure, which could lead to mistakes.
She said: "Doctors are under a lot of pressure and strain. They are not getting to spend enough time talking to patients and checking their prescriptions for mistakes. So I can understand why mistakes are made. But some of them can be fatal, and I think that doctors should be given the time to go over their work. I have a lot of sympathy for doctors, but equally we have a lot of sympathy for patients."
Dr Simon Maxwell, a consultant physician at NHS Lothian with a special interest in prescribing errors, said: "Mistakes happen because of human error and also because this is a frantic area of activity, with a lot of medication being used and a lot of patients coming through very quickly."
Charles Swainson, NHS Lothian medical director, said: "We have developed one of the country's best systems for identifying medication errors. In the period covered by the figures provided, one in six of these were related to prescribing.
"Prescribing covers a whole range of issues and need not mean a patient was affected in any way."
Dr Frances Elliot, medical director for NHS Fife Board, said: "Relevant clinical managers took immediate remedial action at the time of these incidents."
Dr Gareth Davies, medical director NHS Forth Valley, said: "Prescribing errors are monitored and investigated to ensure that lessons are learned and that the learning is shared to reduce the risk of further incidents."
Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon said: "Patient safety is a major priority for NHS Scotland and we are absolutely determined to secure improvements for patients who use our NHS and staff who work in it."
The full article contains 915 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
