http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/121/4/e927
The link is for the full study. But here are the conclusions of the article. I noticed in the study that it is really 2.8% of patients have serious Adverse Drug Events. Some ADE's included in the research article were side effects of drugs such as sedation, nausea, vomiting, constipation, rash, and hives.
CONCLUSIONS
This study is the first to develop and evaluate a trigger tool to detect ADEs in an inpatient pediatric population. We identified an ADE rate of 11.1 per 100 admissions (15.7 per 1000 patient-days), the most common stage in the medication management process for a preventable ADE to be the monitoring phase, and the
most common class of medications associated with ADEs to be analgesics-opioids (causing 51% of all inpatient ADEs). The unit with the
highest ADE rate per patient was the hematology/oncology unit, and the most
frequently identified ADE throughout the 12 study hospitals was pruritis.
Twenty-two percent of all identified ADEs were classified as preventable, with
2.8% of ADEs falling into the more severe harm categories of F through I. Compared with other detection strategies such as administrative databases, hospital-based occurrence reports, and nontriggered chart review, the trigger method seems superior in identifying ADEs in multiple settings, including an inpatient pediatric population. Our data support this claim, comparing the pediatric-focused ADE trigger tool with occurrence reporting within the inpatient setting. These data should provide the groundwork for aggressive, evidence-based prevention strategies to decrease the substantial risk for medication-related harm to our pediatric inpatient population.
