Medication errors for hospital patients represent a serious patient safety concern. Almost one in five medication doses result in an error, and 7% of all errors result in patient injury or death.

There are two main types of medication errors: ordering errors and administration errors. Ordering errors occur when a physician orders a medication and the pharmacist receives and fills that order. For example, the physician might order an overdose, or the pharmacist might misinterpret the physician’s order. Administration errors occur after the pharmacist fills the order and a nurse administers that medication to the patient. The nurse might administer the wrong drug or might mistakenly give the drug the wrong patient.

While patients cannot play any role in preventing ordering errors, they can certainly tell the nurse if the wrong medication is given to them. If they knew what medications they are taking, that is. A new study that assessed current patient awareness of their hospital medication during their stay found the majority of patients could not recall all their medications, or recalled medications that were not actually on their list.

The patients received an average of 11 medications during the time of the study. When asked to recall them, 96% of patients omitted one or more of these medications. On average, patients omitted about seven medications! Moreover, 44% of the patients believed they were receiving a medication that was not actually prescribed to them.

An important point was the medication awareness varied significantly by age. While patients that are 65 years old and younger omitted only 60% of their medication, those that are over omitted 88% of their medications. This basically means that the older patients could recall only one out of ten medications!

Only 28% of the patients reported having seen a list of all their medications, but 78% of them said they would like to see that list.

The findings of this study raise an important flag about the level of awareness that patients have of their medications. If we want to have patients that are actively engaged in their hospital care and that are able to tell whether they are getting the right medication or not, healthcare providers need to provide them, especially the older ones, with a list of their medications and need to take the time to explain to them what each medication is for.