Are doctors and nurses stealing hospital meds for own use?
Australian study finds 19% of drugs go missing every year, likely taken for self-treatment, leading to a suggestion that cameras should be set up in medication rooms
Up to one fifth of medications supplied to Australian public hospitals go missing, with many of the unaccounted drugs used for self-treatment and possibly stolen, a study shows.
Oral antibiotics, anti-nausea medications, benzodiazepines and analgesics disappear from the system at the highest rate, the authors say.
Overall, the discrepancy rate between medications delivered to four Melbourne hospitals and those administered to patients was 19%, leading the researchers to suggest that cameras should be set up in medication rooms.
But medication useful for self-treatment disappeared at the highest rate with 87% of phenoxymethylpenicillin 250mg capsules and more than half of the ondansetron 4mg tablet (53%) unaccounted for.
