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In New York, Pediatric Medication Dosing Errors

Description:
Dosing errors in children are associated with inadequate national standards for medication dosing based on patient weight and age.Although medications are prescribed to millions of children each year in the United States, little is known about medication errors in ambulatory pediatrics. In the process of completing a study to determine the prevalence of outpatient dosing errors.
 
AHRQ researchers identified a number of issues with respect to medication errors in children. These include prescribing medication not labeled for use in children, discrepancies in published dosing recommendations for many medications, unclear guidelines on use of adult dosing recommendations for children of different ages and weights, and the lack of readily available documented weights to determine appropriate weight-based doses for children. The authors suggest we need better national standards of medication doses that are appropriate for children and an improved ability to determine errors through databases that include children's weights as well as prescription information.