Perspectives

Errors in medication management and administration are major threats to patient safety. This piece explores issues with opioid and nursing-sensitive medication safety as well as medication safety in older adults. Future research directions in medication safety are also discussed.

This piece discusses the impact that COVID-19 has had on the services provided by pharmacists and highlights available resources to support them in ensuring medication safety.

Ms. Zipperer was a founding staff member of the National Patient Safety Foundation as their information projects manager and has also been Cybrarian for AHRQ Patient Safety Network since its inception. We spoke with her about the role of librarians in patient safety.

Medication safety in hospitals depends on the successful execution of a complex system of scores of individual tasks that can be categorized into five stages: ordering or prescribing, preparing, dispensing, transcribing, and monitoring the patient's response. Many of these tasks lend themselves to technologic tools. Over the past 20 years, technology has played an increasingly larger role toward achieving the five rights of medication safety: getting the right dose of the right drug to the right patient using the right route and at the right time. While several of these technologies may incur significant upfront and maintenance costs, the net impact over time may be reduced overall institutional costs and improvements in work efficiency. Examples of technologic tools commonly seen in many hospitals today include computerized provider order entry (CPOE) with decision support and automatic dispensing carts, also known as medication dispensing robots. While outside the scope of this Perspective, it is important to emphasize that many nontechnologic interventions, such as clinical pharmacists on physician rounds, can be equally effective in improving medication safety.

Eric G. Poon, MD, MPH, is Director of Clinical Informatics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Poon’s research has focused on using health information technology to improve patient safety. He oversees the development and implementation of clinical applications including computerized physician order entry (CPOE) and barcode-assisted electronic medication administration record, and was lead author on the first rigorous study demonstrating the impact of a bar coding system in a hospital pharmacy. We asked him to speak with us about how such technology can augment medication safety.

Patients have three roles in improving patient safety: helping to ensure their own safety, working with health care organizations to improve safety at the organization and unit level, and advocating as citizens for public reporting and accountability of hospital and health system performance. The following case illustrates how patients can help ensure their own safety.

Allan Frankel, MD, is Director of Patient Safety for Partners HealthCare, the merged entity of Harvard hospitals and clinics that includes Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women's Hospital. Dr. Frankel, an anesthesiologist by training, has been a key member of the faculty of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, co-chairing numerous Adverse Drug Events and Patient Safety Collaboratives. Dr. Frankel's work in patient safety focuses on leadership training, high reliability in health care, teamwork development, and cultural change. We asked Dr. Frankel to speak with us about developing a comprehensive patient safety program.