NHS Board admits drugs mistakes

The health board has said it will learn from any mistakes

More than 500 mistakes were made by NHS Tayside when issuing drugs over the last three years, according to figures.

The errors included prescribing the wrong medicine, delays in getting drugs to wards and paperwork issues.

A patients' group claims many of the 539 faults could have been avoided if doctors were able to spend more time with those who were ill.

NHS Tayside said not all the mistakes were a serious threat to patients and they reported even minor errors.

'Double check'

Margaret Watt, of the Scotland Patients Association, said: "People forget there are people like me who are allergic to so many drugs.

"It's really quite worrying, but equally it's not the fault of the doctors. The doctors are doing their best, but if they could spend a wee bit more time with our patients and maybe double check the prescriptions, that might help the situation.

"But at the end of the day, you can't legislate for people making mistakes."

A spokeswoman for NHS Tayside said: "The 539 drug errors recorded in Tayside represent incidents where medication is involved regardless of level of impact.

"It does not solely represent serious threat to patients; the statistics refer to clinical and non-clinical issues in relation to medication, for example including incidents of delay in delivery of medicines to the ward and issues regarding packaging etc.

"Here in Tayside we are heavily involved in the Safer Patients Initiative which encourages reporting all incidents and near misses across all our hospitals so that we can learn from any mistakes and take preventative measures for the future."