{"id":625599,"date":"2026-05-05T21:51:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T21:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/625599\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T21:51:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T21:51:15","slug":"738-patients-harmed-in-medicine-related-incidents-in-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/625599\/","title":{"rendered":"738 patients harmed in medicine-related incidents in 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There were 738 patients harmed in medication-related incidents in HSE services last year, according to new figures.<\/p>\n<p>Of those, 732 cases were listed as causing minor or moderate harm while six were determined to be extreme.<\/p>\n<p>Five of these resulted in death.<\/p>\n<p>A total of 10,400 medicine-related incidents, or near misses, were recorded.<\/p>\n<p>More than 7,150 incidents reached a patient but with no harm, or negligible harm.<\/p>\n<p>Over 2,540 were classified as near misses, meaning they did not reach a patient.<\/p>\n<p>A medication incident is a preventable event which may result in a patient being harmed while medication is in the control of a healthcare professional.<\/p>\n<p>The details are contained in a HSE response to a parliamentary question from Aont\u00fa leader Peadar T\u00f3ib\u00edn.<\/p>\n<p alt=\"738 patients harmed in medicine-related incidents last year - figures\" class=\"tpe\" data-description=\"\" data-embed=\"rte-player\" data-id=\"22608901\" data-ot-category=\"C0004\" data-title=\"\">We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.<a class=\"blocked-button\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rte.ie\/news\/health\/2026\/0505\/1571751-medication-related-incidents-ireland\/javascript:void(0);\" onclick=\"OneTrust.ToggleInfoDisplay()\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Manage Preferences<\/a><\/p>\n<p>It said that in terms of definition, the severity of &#8216;extreme&#8217; with medication errors, is when an incident leads to permanent incapacity (including psychosocial), or death.<\/p>\n<p>State Claims Agency data shows that the most common medication incident was an omitted or delayed medication dose.<\/p>\n<p>The public health service deals with around two million inpatient and day case treatments every year and almost the same number of emergency department cases.<\/p>\n<p>The HSE said that its Patient Safety Strategy includes reducing medication-related harm as one of the common causes of harm, a priority area for safety improvement.<\/p>\n<p>It said that improvements are introduced on a local, regional and national basis in order to reduce the risk of harm with medication.<\/p>\n<p>The HSE said that a Polypharmacy key performance indicator was introduced this year.<\/p>\n<p>It tracks the proportion of people aged 65 years and older prescribed ten or more regular medications, as an indicator of an increased likelihood of potentially inappropriate medication.<\/p>\n<p>The Health Information and Quality Authority conducts inspections in public hospitals to improve patient safety in relation to medication use.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There were 738 patients harmed in medication-related incidents in HSE services last year, according to new figures. Of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[97,243],"class_list":["post-625599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-medication","tag-health","tag-medication"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}