BACKGROUND Medication error reporting systems in hospitals are faced with the challenge of processing vast numbers of reports which identify a myriad of safety issues. With such large volumes of data and limited resources it makes sense to adopt a prioritisation approach. Several published studies have focused solely on the subset of errors which cause patient harm. The majority of such researc...

BACKGROUND Nurses are frequently interrupted during medication verification and administration; however, few interventions exist to mitigate resulting errors, and the impact of these interventions on medication safety is poorly understood. OBJECTIVE The study objectives were to (A) assess the effects of interruptions on medication verification and administration errors, and (B) design and tes...

The Institute for Safe Medication Practices Canada (ISMP Canada) is an independent, not-for-profit organization founded in early 2000 with the goal of promoting medication safety. It operates a voluntary medication error-reporting program that receives error reports, in confidence, from nurses, pharmacists, physicians and the public. Most reports are analyzed and error prevention strategies are...

Increasing numbers of patients are surviving the intensive care unit. Concordant with our shifting focus to minimizing intensive care unit-acquired morbidity, in the present issue of Critical Care Moyen, Camire, and Stelfox describe the importance of quality pharmacotherapy. They describe challenges and potential solutions to this source of iatrogenic injury in our vulnerable patients. Their ar...

OBJECTIVE assess the safety of medication dispensing processes through the dispensing error rate. METHOD Cross-sectional study carried out at a pharmaceutical service of a pediatric hospital in Espírito Santo, Brazil. Data collection was performed between August and September 2006, totaling 2620 prescribed medication doses. Any deviation from the medical prescription in dispensing medication ...

purpose: to evaluate the incidence of medication error in patients who underwent intraocular surgery based on different methods of drug instruction (hand-written versus orally explained) at labbafinejad medical center. methods: during a 6-month period, we evaluated 204 postoperative patients who underwent cataract or glaucoma surgery. patients were randomly assigned to two groups; in group i, p...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate whether pharmacists completing the medication management plan in the medical discharge summary reduced the rate of medication errors in these summaries. DESIGN Unblinded, cluster randomised, controlled investigation of medication management plans for patients discharged after an inpatient stay in a general medical unit. SETTING The Alfred Hospital, an adult major refe...