Improvements needed to child health services in UK

A study by Cardiff University has found several areas of primary care where improvements are needed to reduce harm to sick children. The study, conducted using data from the England and Wales National Reporting and Learning System (NRLS), analysed over 2,000 incident reports, over a ten year period (2003-2013), involving sick children from primary care in England and Wales and found that poor communication underpinned many incidents resulting in harm to children. Dr Philippa Rees, Alumna of Cardiff University said: "It has been widely acknowledged that child health services in the UK are lagging behind those of neighbouring European countries in terms of quality. Within primary care - where most sick children present - improvement efforts have been particularly stagnant.." "Ultimately we hope this study helps to focus and inspire much overdue improvement efforts within this setting, at both a local and national level, and help us realise one of the fundamental concepts of medical ethics - to first do no harm." The researchers found that: approximately 30% of all reports described some level of harm to a child medication errors in the community pharmacy setting were commonly reported incidents involving diagnosis, assessment, and referral of sick children were particularly harmful with ten deaths, 15 cases of severe harm, and 69 cases of moderate harm reported poor communication underpinned many incidents resulting in harm to children The frequency with which certain problems were reported pointed clearly to areas requiring improvement.