A medication safety project for operating rooms (ORs) was initiated under the leadership of the Departments of Anesthesia and Nursing with a representative from the Canadian Anesthesiologists' Society and the Institute for Safe Medication Practices Canada. The aims of the collaborative project were twofold: (1) to identify areas of exposure to risk and make recommendations to enhance medication...

Medication errors feature firmly in New Zealand’s national data on Serious and Sentinel events. As part of a wider project promoting Medication Safety and Medication Error Prevention at our hospital, a literature search was conducted to identify the incidence of Medication Errors or near misses in the inpatient setting. This summary outlines some of the causative factors identified including bo...

Smart Infusion Pumps are vital tools for use in administering a broad range of parenteral/intravenous medications. Safe and effective use of smart infusion pumps depends upon their integration with Pump Servers, Computerized Physician Order Entry Systems, Pharmacy Information Systems, DERS/MERS – Dose/Medication Error Reduction Systems( and the digital Drug Libraries that they use), eMARS – ele...

Background: Transitional care programs are a growing topic in health care systems across the country, with a focus on achieving a reduction in hospital readmissions and improving patient and medication safety. Numerous strategies have been employed and studied to determine successful approaches to patient transition from the hospital setting to the home setting. Pharmacist-mediated postdischarg...

The comparison of the patient's current medication list with the medication being ordered when admitted to Hospital, identifying omissions, duplications, dosing errors, and potential interactions, constitutes the core process of medicines reconciliation. Access to the medication the patient is taking at home could be unfeasible as this information is frequently stored in various locations and i...

The Third i2b2 Workshop on Natural Language Processing Challenges for Clinical Records focused on the identification of medications, their dosages, modes (routes) of administration, frequencies, durations, and reasons for administration in discharge summaries. This challenge is referred to as the medication challenge. For the medication challenge, i2b2 released detailed annotation guidelines al...