Parents Not Told of Medical Errors

The Alternative Health Newsletter reports on November 21, 2000 that the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood found that almost half of the parents of children in hospitals who received the wrong medication or dosage were never informed of the mistakes.

The study was done at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow, Scotland. The hospital specializes in taking care of children and babies that require risky and complex treatment.

It was found that one mistake happened for every 662 hospitalized children. While most of the errors were deemed "minor", 10% of them required extra treatment to remedy the problem.

In 48% of the cases, the parents of the children were never told what had happened.