Table 1.

Numbers of ‘wrong dose’ medication incidents reported over a 7-year period (n=1568) by stage and category

	Magnitude of error			Total %
	Greater than 1	Less than 1	Unknown
	(Overdose errors)	(Underdose errors)
Stage of the medicines process
Prescribing	429	191	82	702
	27.4%	12.2%	5.2%	44.8%
Dispensing	126	88	9	223
	8%	5.6%	0.6%	14.2%
Administration	371	185	87	643
	23.7%	11.8%	5.5%	41%
Category of incident
Wrong dose	772	379	131	1282
	49.2%	24.2%	8.4%	81.8%
Wong dose preparation	54	38	13	105
	3.4%	2.4%	0.8%	6.7%
Wrong rate	81	37	28	146
	5.2%	2.4%	1.8%	9.3%
Wrong quantity	19	10	6	35
	1.2%	0.6%	0.4%	2.2%
Total	926	464	178	1568
	59.0%	29.6%	11.4%	100%