[Scholarship] The Bloomsbury Colleges Phd Studentship

Relationship between medication error and patient harm due to adverse drug effects

The Bloomsbury Colleges are a consortium of six University of London
colleges comprising Birkbeck, Institute of Education, Royal Veterinary
College, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, School of Oriental
and African Studies and The School of Pharmacy.

Applications are invited for a three-year PhD studentship, to start October
2007. The studentship will cover course fees (at the usual level for UK and
EU studentships) and a student stipend.

The studentship is to be jointly supervised by staff at the London School of
Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and The School of Pharmacy.

*Investigator: Dr Mariam Molokhia (LSHTM) Collaborator: Prof Nick Barber
(SoP)*

*Background:* Several primary care databases have been established in the
United Kingdom that include longitudinal records of morbidity and drug
prescription data on several million people with up to 20 years follow-up,
including The Health Information Network (THIN-GPRD equivalent), and
MediPlus. {Majeed, 2004 5557 /id} Quality of data recording by GPs has been
encouraged by the GP contract introduced in 2004 which includes incentives
for coding all consultations, treatments and diagnoses by READ codes.
Ascertainment of drug exposure (except for over-the-counter preparations)
and morbidity can be almost complete. It is possible to use these databases
to detect medication errors and patterns of non-compliance in patients, and
associated patient morbidity such as increase in adverse drug reactions
(ADRs). This project aims to establish the prevalence and type of medication
errors in an adult UK population using primary care data and two classes of
drug (i) statins (ii) fluoroquinolones, and assess risk arising from
medication error in relation to patient morbidity. Recent relevant
publications are given below:

1. Dean FB, Vincent C, Schachter M, Barber N. The incidence of
prescribing errors in hospital inpatients: an overview of the research
methods. Drug Saf 2005;28(10):891-900.
2. Ghaleb MA, Barber N, Franklin BD, Yeung VW, Khaki ZF, Wong IC.
Systematic review of medication errors in pediatric patients. Ann
Pharmacother 2006 October;40(10):1766-76.

Further details, including instructions on how to apply, are available at
www.lshtm.ac.uk/prospectus/howto/bloomsburyphdstudentships.html or telephone
+44 (0)20 7299 4646 for a copy of the application pack.

The application deadline has been extended to 31st May 2007.