The purpose of the article was to study unintentional
pharmaceutical-related
poisonings committed by laypersons that were reported to the Toxicological Information Centre in the Czech Republic. Identifying frequency, sources, reasons and consequences of the
medication errors in laypersons could help to reduce the overall rate of
medication errors. Records of
medication error enquiries from 2013 to 2014 were extracted from the electronic database, and the following variables were reviewed:
drug class,
dosage form, dose, age of the subject, cause of the error, time interval from ingestion to the call, symptoms, prognosis at the time of the call and
first aid recommended. Of the calls, 1354 met the inclusion criteria. Among them, central nervous system-affecting drugs (23.6%), respiratory drugs (18.5%) and alimentary drugs (16.2%) were the most common
drug classes involved in the
medication errors. The highest proportion of the patients was in the youngest age subgroup 0-5 year-old (46%). The reasons for the
medication errors involved the leaflet misinterpretation and mistaken dose (53.6%), mixing up medications (19.2%), attempting to reduce
pain with repeated doses (6.4%), erroneous routes of administration (2.2%), psychiatric/elderly patients (2.7%), others (9.0%) or unknown (6.9%). A high proportion of children among the patients may be due to the fact that children's dosages for many drugs vary by their weight, and more medications come in a variety of concentrations. Most overdoses could be prevented by safer labelling, proper cap closure systems for liquid products and
medication reconciliation by both physicians and pharmacists.