THE PHARMACEUTICAL Society of Australia released a report today that reveals serious medicine-related problems in children and adolescents, and calls for Australia's health system to be better equipped to deal with medicine safety challenges.
The Medicine safety: Child and adolescent care report notes that nearly 34,000 children present to emergency departments each year - around 93 per day - due to medicine-related problems, with around 40 admitted to hospitals.
This includes an average of 12 hospital presentations and eight hospital admissions per day due to poisoning by medicines.
Meanwhile, costs to the economy have been estimated at upwards of $130 million per year.
Recommendations for action include the implementation of a national incident reporting and learning system, so that when children are harmed by medicines, health professionals and systems learn how to prevent another child suffering the same harm.
Recommendations also call for increased availability of pharmacists in hospital paediatric wards, mandatory indication on prescriptions for children and adolescents, and mandatory manual dose checks when dispensing paediatric prescriptions.
PSA National President Associate Professor Fei Sim said the report's findings painted a "sobering reality" of medicine use in Australia's children and adolescents, showing the urgent need for reform.
"Our health system is failing children and adolescents," she said.
"As a health community, we must commit to doing better, but we also need to be given the resources and tools to do better."
A/Prof Sim pointed out that pharmacists are critical to ensuring the safe use of medicines, and must be supported to do so.
"That means adequately staffing children's hospital wards with the expertise of pharmacists, investing in systems that capture the data needed for evidence-based policy, and improving the quality use of medicines whenever medicines are used," she said.
"It takes all of us, across all areas of practice and indeed across all health professions, to make a difference to the children and adolescents who rely on our care," A/Prof Sim concluded.
The report is available HERE. KB
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