Every eight minutes, a young child in the United States experiences a medication mistake. Too much Tylenol, say. Maybe an extra tablet of ibuprofen, or an adult dose of Sudafed that's much too strong for a small child.
And these mistakes aren't the fault of hospitals or doctors — two groups that have come under close scrutiny for medical errors.
It's parents' fault.
A new study in Pediatrics measures the impact: On average, at least 63,000 children under the age of six experience a non-hospital medication error every year.
That's based on data Nationwide Children's Hospital researchers analyzed from calls made to U.S. poison control hotlines from homes and schools between 2002 and 2012. And the actual number of medication errors among young children is almost certainly higher, given that some parents may not have noticed their mistakes and failed to report.
It's an "astounding" finding, Steve Leuck, a pharmacist and founder of AudibleRx, told Sheryl Wood of dailyRx News. (Leuck wasn't involved in the study.)
But it's "not surprising," he added. "Over the last 20-30 years, over-the-counter medication has become as commonplace as food items, regularly placed side by side in grocery stores and discount markets. The common availability of these products, even though the directions are clearly stated on the label, may lead to the misconception that over-the-counter medications are not dangerous."
One of the biggest problems that researchers uncovered is that parents appeared to give double doses of the same medicine to their children; that mistake was responsible for about a quarter of the errors. Roughly half the errors involved painkillers or cough and cold medicines.
And about 80% of errors involved liquid medicines, suggesting that parents made mistakes when trying to measure the proper dosage.
For the most part, the errors weren't serious. But almost 400 children across the 11-year study suffered serious medical harm. Twenty-five of those children died.
On a positive note, the number of errors involving cough and cold medications declined across the course of the study, and researchers credit public health improvements and awareness. For instance, Tylenol now posts a safety chart to help parents determine the proper dose for children. And the FDA issued a 2008 advisory that children under the age of 2 not use over-the-counter cough and cold medicines.
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Still, health care leaders wonder if parents should still be so quick to give drugs like Tylenol (acetaminophen) to small children. There's a chance that the drug can damage a child's liver, and the medical benefits can be limited.
"Before you give your child acetaminophen, consider whether he or she needs it," the Mayo Clinic cautions. "For example, a fever is a common sign of illness, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, fevers seem to play a key role in fighting infections."
Another problem with giving medicine to children is the ease of making a mistake, experts warn. There are myriad potential causes, from adults getting confused about an appropriate dose for children, kids' own imperfect memories over whether they already had a dose, or the simple exhaustion that comes with being a parent.
That's why if you're a parent or caregiver, study co-author Henry Spiller recommends forming a "mental bubble" whenever you're administering medication to children. According to Spiller, you should:
- Double check that you're giving the correct medication;
- Confirm that you're giving the right dose; and
- Make sure you're not giving a second dose. (Specifically, that the child didn't already get the same medicine.)
"A lot of these medication errors occur [d]uring these distracted periods," Spiller told Andrew Seaman of Reuters Health."If you just take a moment, you can kind of save that mistake."
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