One in eight A&E admissions result in ‘adverse reaction’

Around one in eight admissions to an emergency department resulted in an “adverse reaction”, with 70% of events preventable, research reveals.

The first ever baseline study of adverse reactions in hospital admissions also found, however, that Ireland’s figures do not differ greatly from those in other countries.

The research, published in the BMJ Quality & Safety Journal, looked at 1,574 randomly selected adult inpatient admissions from a sample of eight hospitals over a certain period in 2009.