Prescriptions

(asked on 5th November 2014) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to reduce the number of prescribing errors in hospitals.


Answered by
George Freeman Portrait
George Freeman
This question was answered on 17th November 2014

NHS England is involved in a range of initiatives to improve all aspects of medication safety, including prescribing error. These include setting up a network of dedicated Medication Safety Officers (MSOs) in organisations providing National Health Service-funded care. Over 345 MSOs are now in place and have responsibility for medication safety reporting and learning from errors, including prescription errors.

NHS England and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency issued a Patient Safety Alert Improving medication error incident reporting and learning in March 2014, and potential Patient Safety Alerts are under development that will aim to improve the safe prescribing of glucose test strips, naloxone and low molecular weight heparin.

NHS England has commissioned the development of a new Medication Safety Thermometer, which is a ‘point prevalence’ survey tool available for providers to help them measure the prevalence of certain medication incidents in their care and so facilitate quality improvement projects to tackle leading causes of harm. Details of the Medication Safety Thermometer are available at:

http://www.safetythermometer.nhs.uk/

NHS England is also involved in an initiative led by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health to develop interventions to reduce prescribing errors, as part of their Paediatric Care Online programme.

Significant investment has been made by the Department, Health Education England and NHS Education for Scotland over the last four years in the development of a National Prescribing Safety Assessment. This is a joint initiative by the Medical Schools Council and the British Pharmacological Society involving the UK’s leading experts in prescribing, clinical pharmacology and medical assessment. It is intended to enhance patient safety by ensuring that all new graduates entering the first year of Foundation training have achieved a basic standard of practice.

Reticulating Splines