Our health system is failing kids. As a health community we must commit to doing better, but we also need to be given the resources and tools to do better.
Associate Professor Fei Sim FPS, PSA National President
Medicine Safety: Child & adolescent care report

The seventh report in PSA’s 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.
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Supported by PDL
PSA would like to acknowledge the financial support provided by Pharmaceutical Defence Limited (PDL) for PSA’s Medicine Safety series. PDL membership facilitates professional indemnity insurance and risk management advice for most of the Australian pharmacy profession. In these roles, PDL recognises the need to support the profession and set the standards for medicine safety through the development of the Medicine Safety series. PDL encourages all pharmacists to utilise the Medicine Safety resources in their practice and their representation of the profession to the public.
