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Why do medication errors occur in veterinary practice?
Abstract
Medication errors are common in veterinary practice. While many of these do not result in harm to a patient, those that do can have serious consequences for the patient and also affect the people involved. Patient safety event reporting provides insight into how and why medication errors occur in practice. Although human error plays a part, there are many contributing factors that make mistakes more likely to happen. This article discusses the types of errors that are reported, common error-producing conditions and specific high-risk situations where errors can have the most serious consequences.
Medication errors are defined as ‘any error in the prescribing, dispensing, or administration of a drug, irrespective of whether such errors lead to adverse consequences or not’ (Williams, 2007). An adverse drug event is an adverse reaction to a medicine, or a failure of a medicine's efficacy. Adverse drug events may be caused by a medication error, but medication errors do not always lead to adverse drug reactions. Figures from the NHS reveal that there are an estimated 237 million errors involving medication per year, contributing to roughly 1700 deaths per year (Elliott et al, 2021). It is important to consider whether this reflects what is happening in veterinary practice. While the full story is not always known, from the data that is available it is evident that medication errors represent a significant cause of harm to animals under veterinary care.
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