Opportunities for pharmacy

Abstract

Purpose: To summarize key points from the most recent Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, Preventing Medication Errors, and their relevance to health-system pharmacists.

Summary: Creating a culture of safety is an important antecedent to making changes needed to reduce medication errors. The patient can play an important, but often unrealized, role in preventing medication errors. There are considerable opportunities to improve the application of technology to prevent medication errors. The National Hospital Pharmacy surveys conducted ty the American Society of Health- System Pharmacists have demonstrated the slow rate of adoption of technologies. Pharmacists can play a leadership role in improving both the patients' role and the use of technology to improve medication-use safety.

Conclusion: There are major opportunities for pharmacists to re-think how involved patients are in their care in the institutional setting, by seeing patients as building another check into the medication-use system and by recommitting ourselves to getting patients involved. There are also opportunities to help with patient-safety technology decisions. These extremely expensive technologies almost always involve people changing what they do and their implementation and use often involve other people besides pharmacists, yet the potential is great for new technologies to reduce medication errors.