Epidemiology and risk factors related to medication errors in moroccan children

The present study aims to desribe the characteristics of medication errors occuring in Moroccan children and to analyze the risk factors associated with the hospitalization of cases.

This is a retrospective study of medication errors occurring in children under the age of 15 and declared via the telephone response to the toxicological information unit of the Anti Poison and Pharmacovigilance Center of Morocco during the period from the 1st January 2014 until December 31, 2017.

During the study period, 295 medication errors in children were reported to the Anti Poison and Pharmacovigilance Center of Morocco. The average age was 4.2±3.3 years with extremes ranging from 2 days to 14 years. In order to highlight the factors influencing the hospitalization of patients, we studied the effect of the following variables: dose error, drug error, posology error, error related to the patient’s entourage, error related to the patient, symptomatology. Among the 46 cases with known symptoms, 33 children presented hepato-digestive disorders. Medication errors due to patients represent 3.5 times the risk of hospitalization (RR=3.5; 95% CI : [6.5-37.9]), the same risk for symptomatic cases with (RR = 3.5; 95% CI: [12.4- 46.8], while the dose and administration errors represent respectively 1.4 (RR = 1.4; 95% CI: [33-70.7]) and 1.1 1 (RR = 1.1; 95% CI: [1.4-28.2]) of the hospitalization risk.

Medication erros can cause very considerable damage, sometimes even resulting in the death of the child. For this, future research is needed to put in place effective prevention strategies that can reduce the risk of errors in children. However, awareness campaigns can also be useful for health professionals and the general public.