Improving patient safety and reducing medication errors can be a daunting prospect. One way of concentrating the efforts of a health-care organization is to concentrate first on medications that are “highrisk.” These medications are complex to use, have a great potential for error at multiple steps and also have a great potential for patient harm from the medication. Heparin is certainly a “hig...

THE 4 R’S OF MEDICATION SAFETY The goal of hospital administrators is to adhere to the 4 R’s of medication safety: be sure the right dose of the right medication is being given to the right patient at the right time. For years, industry literature has stated that these objectives are often hindered by incompetencies in hospitals, such as order misinterpretations, incomplete or improper transcri...