This is shocking news for American Parents. But the count would be much higher in India given the way medication information is dispensed mostly by pharmacist. The unintended medication errors happen by parents as the instructions are not clear. mTatva is working towards solving this for saving complications due to medication errors in children.We have identified following reasons contributing to medication errors by parents which can be avoided:
- Unclear instructions: Illegible handwriting on medical records cause a big challenge. Usually instructions are given by pharmacist who may or may not be qualified. But instruction are verbal and hence are being mistaken by parents. As per various studies more than 40% of medical records are illegible and hand-writing is not understood by another healthcare professional.
- Missing the prescription: Many parents miss their paper based prescriptions, leaving it to their memory to do the job.
- Missing a dose: That is biggest issue towards the end of treatment specially with antibiotics leading to increase in drug resistance.
mTatva is working very closely with clinics and parents to solve this. Digital prescription on SMS make the instructions clear and prescription available on parents mobile all the time. Medication reminders go a step further and reminds parents to not miss the dosages.
To read more on the report please see the link below:
Unintended medication errors by parent every 8 minutes