Half of care home residents exposed to medication errors Deidre Wild, a visiting research fellow at UWE Bristol, added: "The majority of residents are cared for in a residential home with no onsite nursing staff. In such homes the management of prescribed medication is undertaken by social care staff who may have had no formal training in safe practice. The study, published online in the journal BMC Geriatrics, looked at 13 care homes in the south west, midlands and north west of England, and analysed 188,249 attempts to administer drugs by staff. Each resident received nine different drugs on average and were given medication 206 times a month. Each resident experienced 6.6 potential errors, with the most common being an attempt to give drugs at the wrong time. However experts say many of the problems could be avoided with new technology which uses a barcode system to alert staff to potential errors. Staff scan each patient's barcode identifier then scan the drugs sent out by the pharmacy to check they are being given the right dose at the correct time. Tariq Muhammad, Managing Director of Pharmacy Plus who developed the system, said: "Care homes are not generally considered a priority, but they account for a large amount of NHS and social care costs and time. One in 15 hospital admissions is due to medication errors, and the resultant cost of hospital stays to the NHS is £1 billion per year.