[There is an inconsistency between quality demands for medication reconciliation and the clinical reality].

The purpose of medication reconciliation in the Danish Quality Model is "to ensure that patients receive the correct drugs at admission …". This should be done by matching the patient's medication history with the prescribed medications to eliminate unintended inconsistencies. It lies in the procedure that the deficiencies in the medication history will be maintained by virtue of procedure.

[The hospital guidelines for medication reconciliation are not precis].

Medication reconciliation has proved difficult to implement in practice. Medication reconciliation is a requirement in the Danish Healthcare Quality Programme. The purpose is to ensure that the patient receives the correct medicine.

[Need for innovation in working with adverse events].

Patient safety has been in focus in the Danish health care for the past five years, with a mandatory reporting system for adverse events/incidents at hospitals. The incidents have been analysed with the Root Cause Analysis. This analysis is a relatively simple linear cause effect analysis, however, not suitable for the use in a complex sociotechnic health-care system.

[Children's health at the 1,5-year examination in the municipality of Sundeved].

Introduction: We investigated whether the health visitor at an examination of children aged 18 months could identify those with an increased risk of morbidity and use of health services.

Methods: From 1992 to 1997, 233 children aged 18 months were examined by the health visitor from the district of Sundeved, Denmark. At each examination, the visitor filled in a questionnaire concerning the child's health, living conditions, and development.