Medication Errors

Medication errors, highly publicized are every healthcare professional’s nightmare. In the geriatric population, medication errors compounded with the frailty of the patients can have significant if not catastrophic outcomes. Monitoring these events in the nursing skilled facility is not just essential, but also incumbent on good clinical practice.
Medication errors can  be the results of poor prescribing, sloppy transcriptions, error in dispensing, and /or error in administration. In essence throughout the entire process, the potential for error lurks.

Do you have a method by which you can quantify these medication errors? do you encourage reporting and self-reporting especially near-miss events? Once tracked, do you have a committee or a group that analyzes the trend? and finally, once armed with all that information what is your plan?

Support to engage the medical staff and residents/patients in nursing facilities or acute care centers is available to reduce the potentiality of costly errors. The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) could provide help, your consultant pharmacist can be a great asset in not just reporting the errors found during a chart review, but in analyzing the data and providing a plan of action to reduce what we all wish never happens.