EPF attended regulatory workshop on Medication errors

Healthcare providers and patient groups widely recognise that errors in medication are major public health issue. Our Senior Policy Adviser, Kaisa Immonen-Charalambous, attended the Regulation Workshop on Medication errors that took place at European Medicines Agency (EMA) in London last month.

The rate for medication errors for outpatient care (ambulatory care) are as high as 7.5% for prescriptions but  much lower for dispensing (0.8%). The rates of errors in hospitals vary from 0.3 to 9.1% for prescription and 1.6 to 2.1% for dispensing.

Each member state has its own national system for detecting errors and there are agreements for sharing information with other member states.

The new EU pharmacovigilance legislation will provide a framework to member states to report errors at EU level. Please follow this link to read the toolkit EPF has prepared to help you understanding the legislation.

The purpose of the workshop was to examine ways in which these new provisions can be implemented. Please follow this link to find more information about the event.

Relevance to EPF’s work with patient involvement

The event helped us to clarify what medication errors are and how they are classified. In our view medication errors should be looked at in a wider patient safety perspective. Patient safety risk management systems

For more information, please contact our Senior Policy Adviser Kaisa Immonen-Charalambous.