Discharge can be a vulnerable time for patients, particularly older adults taking multiple medications. Through interviews with clinicians from 10 professional roles, researchers identified three key strategies to promote safe medication management at hospital discharge: (1) streamlining medication reconciliation across care settings, (2) building patient capacity and engagement, and (3) redesigning the transitional process. Aligning clinician and patient care transition goals using these three strategies may better prepare patients to safely self-manage their medications at home.   

This study sought to determine the rate of pediatric emergency department (ED) visits due to adverse drug events (ADE). Of 1,708 pediatric patients, 12.3% were admitted to the ED due to ADEs, with the highest rates of admission due to neurological, dermatological, and respiratory medications. The authors recommend the involvement of clinical pharmacists to prevent and identify ADEs in the pediatric population, particularly through education of children’s caregivers and health professionals.

Inappropriate care activities can cascade to significantly impact patient safety. This article shares how medication side effects can be misdiagnosed to perpetuate harm in older patients rather than getting to the root of the care concerns. 

Parents are advised to keep medications inaccessible to young children to avoid accidental ingestions. This study prospectively enrolled nearly 4,500 individuals calling poison control centers about unsupervised solid dose medication exposure in young children (ages 5 years and younger) to identify the types of containers from which young children accessed these medications. The majority of incidents (71.6%) involved children 2 years and younger. Incidents were equally divided among calls involving prescription-only medications, over-the-counter (OTC) projects requiring child-resistant packaging, and OTC projects not requiring such packaging. One-third of all incidents involved medication that had been removed from the original container; this was more likely in incidents involving prescription drugs compared to OTC drugs (adjusted odds ratio, 3.39; 95% CI, 2.87-4.00).  These findings suggest that unsupervised medication exposures in young children are just as often the result of adults removing medications from original packaging as the result of improper use or failure of child-resistant packaging.