[Medication errors when transferring within health care services].

Procedures for transferring information on medication were registered for 20 patients on admission to and discharge from Aker Hospital in Oslo. The patients were living in nursing homes or in their own homes with care from the community nursing system. The various medication notes used for information transfer were compared. It was found that 19 out of 20 patients had a total of 100 discrepancies in their medication information. The results show that procedures for transferring information on medication are by no means optimal, and that there is large potential for improvement. It is assumed that similar discrepancies may also be found at other hospitals.