FOI 26-250 Paracetamol Related Incidents
Freedom of Information Request
- Reference
- FOI 26-250 Paracetamol Related Incidents
- Request Date
- 29 May 2026
- Response Date
- 17 Jun 2026
- Information Requested
I am requesting the following information on paracetamol overdose incidents attended by your service. Please note that where data is not held in the format requested, I would be grateful if you could provide it in whatever format is available. For the financial year 2024/25 (1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025), please provide the following information. If complete data for this period is not yet available, please provide the most recent 12-month period for which complete data is held, and specify the dates covered.
- The total number of incidents attended by your service where the primary presenting condition was paracetamol overdose or suspected paracetamol toxicity.
- Of those incidents, how many involved patients aged 17 years or under. If possible, please break this down by the following age groups: 0-11 years, 12-15 years, 16-17 years.
- Of all incidents, where this information is recorded, how many were classified as:
(a) accidental overdose or therapeutic excess - defined as an unintentional overdose taken for therapeutic purposes;
(b) intentional self-poisoning;
(c) unknown or unclassified.
- Of all incidents, how many involved a combination productcontainingparacetamol - such as a cold and flu remedy, co-codamol or similar - rather than paracetamol alone?
- Response
We have provided information relating to incidents in the financial year 2024/2025 (1st April 2024 – 31st March 2025 inclusive) and is based on incidents that have been coded as overdose or recorded overdose substance (where available).
Important information to consider when interpreting this data
This report has been produced in two parts, this is due to the ongoing integration of a new system. This data cannot be merged into one table due to an overlap in a phased introduction of each system and the methodology for the data time frames is different.
The first tab of the sheet takes data collected from our legacy system (T2) and the second tab of the sheet details data collected from (T3); these figures should not be added together.
For the given data, you will see that some of the figures are shown as, five or less than five, please note that this figure has been suppressed because the statistical value is less than five. The Scottish Ambulance
service has a duty, under the Data Protection Act to avoid directly or indirectly revealing any personal details. It is therefore widely understood that provision of statistics on small numbers, five or less are statistically suppressed upon disclosure.
Q1 – Please see the attached sheet detailing the total number of incidents attended by the Scottish Ambulance Service with the final code of ‘Overdose’ and substance to be found as paracetamol for the period requested.
Q2 - Please see the attached sheet detailing the total number of incidents attended by the Scottish Ambulance Service with the final code of ‘Overdose’ and substance to be found as paracetamol broken down into the age groups requested, for the period requested.
Q3 – The Scottish Ambulance Service does not hold the information requested for accidental or intentional overdoses. While clinicians may record contextual information in patient records, there is no structured field that categorises overdoses as accidental/therapeutic excess, intentional self-poisoning or unknow. It is for this reason we have applied section 17 of the Freedom of Information Scotland Act 2002, as information not held.
Q4 - The Scottish Ambulance Service can only report on information captured within structured fields of the electronic patient report form.
We are unable to reliably identify all cases involving combination products containing paracetamol, as medication details are not consistently recorded in a way that allows identification of all substances containing paracetamol (for example, cold and flu remedies or other compound medications where paracetamol is one component).
However, we are able to report on incidents where the overdose substance has been specifically recorded as co‑codamol, this has been provided in the attached sheet.
- Response Documents
