High-risk medication use and patient safety

Abstract

Medication safety is a significant issue in hospitals everywhere. Although the number of errors caused by high risk medication is less common, the impact on the patient is more critical due to their potentially fatal outcome. Great improvements are needed to reduce errors and increase this aspect of patient safety. Several health quality organizations have reported a list of high-risk medications and useful clinical guidelines, including improving communication, standardizing medication order protocols, providing decision-support tools, and continually monitoring for errors. It is evident that systemic redesign would be more effective in quality improvement; however, given that the medication process is not the same in each institute, root cause analysis based on each error report should be carried out to improve medication safety. Moreover, it is worth noting that leadership should play an important role in the creation of a culture that supports and promotes a strong health and safety performance of an organization.