Hospital patients are being prescribed medicines without being given details of the potential side effects, research revealed today.
Nearly half of almost 5,000 patients surveyed in 26 hospitals throughout Ireland said they were given no details about the side effects of medicines prescribed to them during their hospital stay.
Marie Kehoe, president of the Irish Society for Quality and Safety in Healthcare (ISQSH), said: "One of the things I find most shocking is we are still not communicating with our patients and especially about things that have huge impact on them such as medication safety."
On the findings of the largest ever national survey of patients, she said: "We put our patients on so many different medications and yet to think we are not informing them of all the different side effects I find that fairly alarming."
Ms Kehoe said the ISQSH report The Patients' Viewshowed some of the older age groups were used to not querying doctors' opinions.
Poor communications were highlighted as a cause for concern with over a fifth of patients stating they had questions they would have liked to ask their healthcare team - but 10 per cent were too intimidated to ask.
"One in four patients said they would like to ask some follow up questions of their healthcare team but they either weren't able to access the team or they felt intimidated, and I think it is important that we communicate with people,"
Speaking on the publication of the report, the Minister for Health Mary Harney said: "I think everybody's identity should be established before a surgical procedure takes place. It is 96.8 per cent it should be 100 per cent, and it is 89 per cent with medication, because serious errors can happen from a patient's safety perspective if the wrong medication is given to the wrong patient. Or if for example the wrong surgical procedure takes place with the wrong patient."
The survey found less than half of the 4,820 patients who responded to the survey by the non-profit group saw members of their healthcare team wash their hands prior to carrying out an examination on them.
"That goes hand in hand with the recent hygiene audit as well. They said they did not see their care givers washing their hands prior to care and unfortunately it is probably true," Ms Kehoe said.
Ms Kehoe said the report highlighted many areas where the system was performing well, with around 91 per cent of patients saying they would prefer to return to the same hospital they were treated in.
One in five patients reported their operation had been cancelled and rescheduled on at least one occasion.
Around four in 10 patients said their permission was not sought in advance of being visited by medical students during their stay.
Just over half of patients reported being on a hospital waiting list for three-months or less before being admitted - with one in eight reporting delays of a year or more.
Over 80 per cent said they had been seen by a doctor in an A&E unit within three hours of registering.
PA