Do you feel safe in hospital?

The National Patient Safety Agency recently reported on the extent to which patients are being given the wrong medicine, or the wrong dose.

In 2007 there were at least 37 deaths and 63 cases of severe harm though wrongly administered prescriptions. More than 200 patients every month require further treatment, or die, because of mistakes over medication. (Almost one in five incidents of death or severe harm were because drugs were omitted or delayed.) The wrong doses, - one patient received 100 mg of morphine instead of the 10mg prescribed, or the wrong drugs, figure prominently, but sometimes the medicine had been prescribed for another patient with the same name.

The report, available last week, reported that the number of errors increased from 36,335 in 2005 to 86,085 in 2007. It also stated that the Agency doubted if more than 10% of errors were reported, although probably most very serious ones were. On this basis, there could be as many as 860,000 errors annually through out the NHS as a whole. Of all errors probably 96% result in little or no harm, and are rectified.

The important question is why they occur, and why the number seems to be rising.

Despite all the extra money which has been spent, the NHS is in something of a crisis. Partly, in some places, this is due to staff shortages. In many it is because of the load of administration - form filling and box ticking. In some cases it, like serious infections, due to an overloaded system and sheer staff tiredness.