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Health Literacy and Child Health Outcomes: Parental Health Literacy and Medication Errors

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Health Literacy and Child Health Outcomes

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Public Health ((BRIEFSCHILD))

Abstract

Parents frequently take on the task of dosing medications for their children. More than half of children in the US take one or more medications in a given week.1 Unfortunately, every eight minutes, a child experiences an outpatient medication error, and this estimate is based only on those errors that lead to U.S. Poison Control Center calls.2 Parental medication administration errors are thought to account for 70% of preventable pediatric outpatient adverse events.3,4 Errors with medications range in type and can include quantitative dosing errors, in which a different amount is given than was intended, errors in frequency or duration, administration of an incorrect medication or formulation, use of an incorrect administration route, or incorrect preparation or storage.5-9.

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Correspondence to H. Shonna Yin MD, MS .

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Shonna Yin, H. (2017). Health Literacy and Child Health Outcomes: Parental Health Literacy and Medication Errors. In: Connelly, R., Turner, T. (eds) Health Literacy and Child Health Outcomes. SpringerBriefs in Public Health(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50799-6_3

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