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Standardising paediatric medicine labels to enhance safety and clarity
- Steve TomlinDirector of the Children’s Medicines Research & Innovation Centre at Great Ormond Street Hospital
Key points
- Paediatric pharmacy labels vary hugely, and how the dose is written, in milligrams, millilitres or both, causes the most confusion.
- The most important thing is that all labels are written the same way, but parents prefer the dose in millilitres.
- All liquid medicines should be written in millilitres to give the dose, and a position statement and talks with regulators are under way.
Steve Tomlin, Director of the Children’s Medicines Research & Innovation Centre at Great Ormond Street Hospital, discusses the challenges and solutions around the labelling of paediatric medicines. The video highlights the significant variability in how doses are written on pharmacy labels—some use milligrams, others millilitres, and some a combination of both—leading to confusion for parents and carers. Steve explains that while legal requirements for pharmacy labelling exist, the level of detail is not specified, resulting in inconsistent practices. He emphasises that the most important factor is consistency: all labels should be written the same way, regardless of the chosen format. However, research shows that parents prefer doses to be written in millilitres, as this is the unit they use when administering the medicine. Steve details ongoing efforts to standardise paediatric medicine labels, including a forthcoming position statement from the Neonatal and Paediatric Pharmacy Group, and discussions with regulators to establish national standards. The primary recommendation is that all liquid medicines should display the dose in millilitres, simplifying administration and reducing the risk of errors. This interview took place at the RCPCH conference 2025 in Glasgow, Scotland.
Read the transcript
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. It may contain errors, so check it against the video before quoting.
Whilst there's legal aspects to labelling, that is what must be on a pharmacy label, the detail of it actually isn't very specific, and as we've been looking at paediatric labels, we've realised that the variance on them is absolutely huge. Probably the biggest one and the one which creates the most problems is how the dose is written. Some people write it in milligrams, some people in millilitres, some in millilitres and milligrams, some in milligrams and millilitres and so on. And that causes all sorts of confusion.
Now we've tried to do some work to get the answer to what is the best way of labelling. In some ways it's not the important thing. The important thing is so that all labels are written the same way irrespective of how they're written. But we do know that parents do prefer it in millilitres. After all that is what they are going to give their medicine in. Therefore they need to know what it is they are drawing up.
And so we've done a lot of work around all sorts of aspects of labelling to try and get to a standard and the Neonatal and Paediatric Pharmacy Group are just doing a position statement on what those should be and we're talking to the regulators to move this on as well and hopefully these will become national standards for all pharmacy labels. And that primary thing is we believe that all liquid medicines should be written in millilitres to give the dose.
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Cite this video
Steve Tomlin. “Standardising paediatric medicine labels to enhance safety and clarity.” The Paediatric Video Journal, 23 June 2025. https://paediatricvj.com/videos/standardising-paediatric-medicine-labels-to-enhance-safety-and-tomlin/
This interview is educational content intended for healthcare professionals and is not medical advice. Views expressed are those of the speaker. © The Paediatric Video Journal. All rights reserved.