At least one medication error per hospital patient occurs each day

Just how rigorous public acute hospitals are in preventing medication errors will come under health watchdog scrutiny from next month.

A number of hospitals have already been written to by the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) advising them that one-day on-site inspections will take place from next month. The hospitals, not publicly identified by Hiqa, will be given 10 working days’ notice of the pending inspection.

Aoife Lenihan, lead inspector on Hiqa’s medication safety monitoring programme, said that while most medication errors do not result in patient harm, they have “in some instances, the potential to result in catastrophic harm or death to patients”.