Medication safety in ambulatory care settings is an area of growing concern. This article describes ACTMed (ACTivating primary care for MEDicine safety), a cluster randomized trial set in Australia which intends to improve medication safety in primary care settings. The ACTMed intervention will use health information technology (e.g., clinical indicator algorithms), guideline-based clinical recommendations, shared decision-making, and financial incentives to reduce serious medication-related harm, medication-related hospitalizations, and death.

… these skills during clinician training. … Scott IA, Hubbard RE, Crock C, et al. Developing critical thinking skills for delivering …

Cognitively impaired older adults living in residential aged care facilities (RACF) are at risk of adverse drug events related to potentially inappropriate polypharmacy. Based on telehealth visits with 720 RACF residents, 66% were receiving polypharmacy, with cognitively intact residents receiving significantly more medications than cognitively impaired residents. Overall, 82% of residents were receiving anti-cholinergic medications which should be avoided in this population. Future interventions and research should pay particular attention to the prescribing of these medications.

This study found that about half of patients aged 70 and older who were discharged from the hospital to a long-term care facility were prescribed a medication deemed to be high risk according to Beers criteria. Despite clear evidence that geriatric patients experience high rates of adverse drug events, inappropriate prescribing remains common and concerning.

This study used semistructured interviews with interns who had committed prescribing errors to determine the underlying factors predisposing to the error.