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Review

Medication Safety

Hooi Cheng Soon  1 , Pierangelo Geppetti  2   3 , Chiara Lupi  2   3 , Boon Phiaw Kho  4
Liam Donaldson  1 , Walter Ricciardi  2 , Susan Sheridan  3 , Riccardo Tartaglia  4
, editors.
In: Textbook of Patient Safety and Clinical Risk Management [Internet]. Cham (CH): Springer; 2021. Chapter 31.
.
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Review

Medication Safety

Hooi Cheng Soon et al.
Free Books & Documents

Excerpt

Pharmacotherapy is the most common therapeutic intervention in healthcare to improve health outcomes of patients. However, there are many instances where prescribed medications resulted in patient morbidity and mortality instead. Medication errors can happen at any step of the medication use process, but a substantial burden of medication-related harm is focused primarily on three priority areas of healthcare delivery: transitions of care, polypharmacy and high-risk situations. This chapter highlights prevalence of issues concerning these three core areas and describes common medication errors as well as risk mitigation strategies to improve service delivery. An appreciation of these inherent risks will enable healthcare providers to navigate the pitfalls better and make efforts to ensure medication safety while providing health services.

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References

    1. World Health Organization. Patient safety: making health care safer. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2017.
    1. World Health Organization. WHO global patient safety challenge: medication without harm. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2017.
    1. About medication errors [website]. Rockville, MD: National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention; 2019. http://www.nccmerp.org/about-medication-errors. Accessed 31 Oct 2019.
    1. 10 facts on Patient Safety [website]. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2019. https://www.who.int/features/factfiles/patient_safety/en/. Accessed 31 Oct 2019.
    1. Aitken M, Gorokhovich L. Advancing the responsible use of medicines: applying levers for change. Parsippany, NJ: IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics; 2012.

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