Medication Safety

Medication safety is a top priority for healthcare organizations, and the reasons are clear: the potential for harm to patients from medication errors is great, and the cost of such errors to society is high. Therefore, reducing the frequency and severity of medication errors and adopting strategies to prevent adverse drug events are ongoing goals for organizations. Numerous strategies to prevent the most common errors exist. Because medication errors can involve many groups—physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and even self-medicating patients—risk managers must help their facilities adopt a multidisciplinary approach to medication error reduction.

Health System Risk Management has prepared this self-assessment questionnaire (SAQ) to help risk managers evaluate their facilities' policies and procedures regarding medication safety. The focus is on preventing medication errors and responding to events that do occur. This SAQ does not address all the medication management issues that accrediting organizations and state and federal regulations may require facilities to address. ECRI recommends that this questionnaire be completed initially to...