Nearly 34,000 children presenting to emergency departments each year due to medicine problems, new report finds

31 January 2025

 

An estimated 93 children present to Australia’s emergency departments each day due to medicine-related problems, with approximately 40 admitted to hospitals, according to a new report from the peak body for Australian pharmacists.

 

The Medicine safety: Child and adolescent care report released by the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia today reveals the extent of medicine-related problems in children and adolescents, costing the Australian economy at least $130 million each year.

 

In the past six months alone, approximately 120,000 Australian children under 14 years old have experienced an adverse event due to medicines.

 

The report calls for Australia’s health system to be better equipped to deal with medicine safety challenges, with recommendations for action including the implementation of a national incident reporting and learning system, so that when children are harmed by medicines, health professionals and systems learn how to prevent another child suffering the same harm. This would bring Australia in line with many of our international peers, including Canada who have had the Assurance and Improvement in Medication Safety (AIMS) program in place since 2019.

 

Further recommendations also call for increased availability of pharmacists in paediatric wards of hospitals, as well as mandatory indication on prescriptions for children and adolescents, and mandatory manual dose checks during dispensing of paediatric prescriptions.

 

PSA National President Associate Professor Fei Sim FPS said the report’s findings painted a sobering reality of medicine use in Australia’s children and adolescents, showing the urgent need for reform.

 

“As the peak body for all pharmacists in all areas of practice, PSA continues to advocate for pharmacists to be further empowered in their roles as medicine safety experts.

 

“Our health system is failing children and adolescents. As a health community, we must commit to doing better, but we also need to be given the resources and tools to do better. Pharmacists are critical to ensure the safe use of medicines and must be supported to do so.

 

“That means adequately staffing children’s hospital wards with the expertise of pharmacists, investing in systems that capture the data needed for evidence-based policy, and improving the quality use of medicines whenever medicines are used.

 

“It takes all of us, across all areas of practice and indeed across all health professions, to make a difference to the children and adolescents who rely on our care,” Associate Professor Sim concluded.

 

The full Medicine safety: Child and adolescent care report is available at www.psa.org.au/medicine-safety-child-adolescent-care-report/

 

Media contact:   Georgia Clarke   M: 0480 099 798  E: georgia.clarke@psa.org.au