Medicine Safety: Child & adolescent care report (January 2025)

Summary

The seventh report in Pharmaceutical Society of Australia’s (PSA) medicine safety series, revealing the extent and nature of problems with medicine safety in Australia and driving change in the quality use of medicines.

The report reveals:

• approximately 40 hospital admissions and 93 presentations to the emergency department daily due to medicine-related problems, half of which are preventable
• $130 million in annual costs associated with medicine-related harm in this age group, and
• an average of 12 hospital presentations and 8 hospital admissions per day due to poisoning by medicines.

As part of the report, PSA also makes a series of actionable recommendations to address current medicine safety challenges across care settings ranging from a nationally co-ordinated monitoring system and mandatory dose checks, to increased availability of pharmacists on children’s wards.