Introduction to Medication Safety
Links to Australian National Prescribing Curriculum course with Canadian adaptation (eg, Choosing Wisely Canada), and Vanessa’s Law reporting obligations, with interpretation preambles for medical students.
Understanding Medication Safety
Preamble:
Differences in terms used:
- Registrar vs Resident (Canada)
- Specialised vs Specialized
- Concept of Open Disclosure – Open discussion with patients and/or family members
Therapeutics:
- Scenario 1: Methotrexate Overdose – real example from a teaching hospital in Australia. Emphasize not using ‘ad’ in Australia which is ‘od’ in Canada. The drug is prescribed weekly.
- Scenario 2: Inadvertent Rx for Fentanyl in an incorrect patient’s chart
Resources:
- The statistics used for medication errors are Australia based
- E.g. % of prescribing error, % of reported errors, % of administration errors etc.
- Understanding and Reporting medication errors
- CMIRPS
Canadian Medication Incident Reporting and Prevention System Program | ISMP Canada - NCC MERP Index for Categorizing Medication Errors
Types of Medication Errors | NCC MERP
- CMIRPS