Expectations to Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems in healthcare are high when it comes to reducing medication errors and increasing security in the medication process. Studies show that certain types of medication errors are eliminated when introducing EMRs; however, such systems also entail new types of errors. Based on a study in an orthopedic surgical ward in a medium-sized Danish hosp...

Of all care areas mentioned in medication error reports submitted from August 1, 2009, through July 31, 2010, to the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority, the emergency department (ED) is the third most commonly mentioned, appearing in 6% of all medication error reports. The predominant medication error event types in the ED include wrong dose/ overdosage, drug omission, and wrong drug. The pr...

BACKGROUND Early hospital readmission of patients after discharge is a public health problem. One major cause of hospital readmission is dysfunctions in integrated pathways between community and hospital care that can cause adverse drug events. Furthermore, the French ENEIS 2 study showed that 1.3% of hospital stays originated from serious adverse drug events in 2009. Pharmacy-led medication re...

To determine the quality and completeness of the list of home medications documented by nurses using a codified process, authors conducted a comparative study of home medications using a non-codified and codified process for documentation of required data fields including drug, dose, route of administration, frequency, and schedule. Each documented home medication (DHM) was evaluated based on t...

Patient identification (ID) errors occurring during the medication administration process can be fatal. The aim of this study is to determine whether differences in nurses' behaviors and visual scanning patterns during the medication administration process influence their capacities to identify patient ID errors. Nurse participants (n = 20) administered medications to 3 patients in a simulated ...

Medication reconciliation arose as the solution to the well-documented patient safety problem of unintentionally introducing changes in patients' medication regimens due to incomplete or inaccurate medication information at transitions in care. Unfortunately, medication reconciliation has often been misperceived as a superficial administrative accounting task with a "pre-occupation with complet...

Medication errors can be frequent in hospitals; these errors are multidisciplinary and occur at various stages of the drug therapy. The present study evaluated the seriousness, the type and the drugs involved in medication errors reported at the Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre. We analyzed written error reports for 2010-2011. The sample consisted of 165 reports. The errors identified were ...

OBJECTIVE To define medication adherence and describe the limitations of various assessment methods, reasons for nonadherence to medications used to manage chronic illness, the impact of nonadherence to osteoporosis medications, and strategies for improving medication adherence. BACKGROUND Medication nonadherence is a major public health problem that adversely affects patient outcomes and inc...

Automated dispensing cabinets (ADCs)—now ubiquitous in U.S. hospitals—also play a large role in the medication administration process. Managing Time-Critical Medications Promoting patient safety includes complying with CMS requirements regarding the medication use process. One of these requirements calls for dispensing and administering time-critical medications within a 30-minute window. Antib...

Medication Reconciliation has emerged as a major patient safety goal in the management of medication errors and prevention of adverse drug events. The medication reconciliation process supports the task of detecting and correcting potential mistakes in a patient’s medication list so that physicians can make correct, consistent, timely and safe prescribing decisions. Maintaining an accurate list...