Medication — Technology

This document is a resource for policy-makers, health workers, health care leaders, academic institutions and other relevant institutions, to understand the global burden of medication errors, address and prevent medication-related harm at all levels of health care, aligned with the strategic plan of the third WHO Global Patient Safety Challenge: Medication Without Harm.

Changemaker Stories

• Taking Stock of Fluids to Find the Right Solution
  After a hospital received several event reports of wrong and expired intravenous (IV) fluids caught before reaching patients, the medication safety officer investigated how these products were supplied. This institution purchases all their plain IV fluids from one manufacturer, so the products appear very similar.
• Reducing Medication Stock-Outs With New Inventorying System
  The pharmacy department noted several medication error event reports related to patients missing doses or receiving late doses.
• Event Reporting Identifies Unanticipated Equipment Failure
  An organization reported several heparin infusion events over a year, which prompted several process changes in the electronic health record with the acknowledgement of orders, views within the medication administration record, and labeling of intravenous lines.
• Reducing Risk of Compounding Medication Errors
  As part of a facility's efforts to become a high reliability organization (which maintains high levels of safety, quality, and efficiency) to achieve zero patient harm, they turned their attention to addressing reports of medication errors related to preparing intravenous (IV) products.
  
• Drug Mix-Up in High-Risk Pregnancy Prompts Medication Process Changes
  A woman in her second trimester (24 weeks gestation), who had experienced two prior fetal losses at 18 and 20 weeks respectively and had undergone a cervical cerclage (closing the cervix with stitches to hold a pregnancy) about a month earlier, presented to the hospital with intermittent contractions.
  
• Medication Safety Event Reports Lead to Facilitywide Change
  Event reports do more than simply record what went wrong—they're an important way to communicate issues so things can go better next time.
  
• Uncovering a Health Record Error With a Nationwide Impact
  While rounding with an inpatient team, a clinical pharmacist identified that a patient's medication list contained two medications to prevent stroke and heart attack, ticagrelor and atorvastatin, with no apparent indication.
  
• Avoiding Medication Mix-ups
  Look-alike, sound-alike medications are a contributing factor in wrong drug medication errors, because the similar names are easily mixed up—presenting a high risk of patient harm.
  
• Standardizing Medication Reconciliation at Discharge
  A safety event involving a discharged patient taking too much of a prescribed medication prompted a facility's liver transplant and clinical leadership teams to perform a root cause analysis.
  
• Challenges in Patient Hand-Offs Between Hospitals
  A patient with acute thrombus—a blood clot in a vein or artery—was being transferred from an emergency department at a small outlying facility (“transferring facility") to the intensive care unit (ICU) at a larger hospital (“receiving facility").
  
• Collaboration Addresses Long-Standing Problem
  Medication safety committees regularly review medication errors and near misses. During one such review, the med safety committee at one hospital recognized issues with the way opioids were being ordered via the patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) pumps, including the availability of multiple concentrations of drugs which could be administered in the wrong amount to a patient.
  
• ​Engaging Staff in Solving Safety Issues
  After a health system experienced multiple events in which a patient received an insulin injection with another patient's pen, with no improvements following root cause analysis and process changes, the safety team published an article in their patient safety newsletter soliciting ideas from staff.
  

NCC MERP Index for Categorizing Medication Errors
This Medication Error Index classifies errors according to the severity of the outcome.

ISMP List of High-Alert Medications in Acute Care Settings
Use this list to determine which medications require special safeguards to reduce the risk of errors. ​