Improving Medication Safety: Safer Together

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Medication safety is a critical issue for health professionals and their patients. Although medicines make a significant contribution to preventing and treating illness, increasing life expectancy and improving quality of life, they also have the potential to cause harm. As a result, medicines are not only associated with providing therapeutic benefits to patients, but also with adverse events caused by errors in systems and processes within prescribing, dispensing, administration and monitoring practices. Medication incidences have negative impacts on patient outcomes and public confidence of healthcare delivery and they are costly to the health care system, its health professionals and regulatory bodies. Safe use of medicines is a high priority in the healthcare sector.

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Improvements to medication safety occur on an ongoing basis in response to adverse events and involve a collaborative approach between prescribers, administrators, safety and quality organisations and health regulators. High risk medicines, in particular, draw attention to safe systems and processes that support accurate prescribing, appropriate dispensing, receipting, storing and administrating of medicines to patients.

Safety and the quality usage of medication in Australia has been identified by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care as a priority within the National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards (NSQHS). Standard 4 of the NSQHS: Medication Safety provides guidelines for health service providers to mitigate the risk of medication incidents through improvements to the systems and processes for safe and quality use of medicines. Initiatives designed to improve medicine safety include improvements to labeling and packaging such as Tall Man lettering, labeling recommendations for injectable medicines, fluids and lines (colour coding), and recommendations for national terminology, abbreviations, symbols and alerts when dispensing, prescribing and administering medicines. The two day workshop, Improving Medication Safety: Safer Together, to be conducted by the Australian College of Nursing, is designed for registered nurses and enrolled nurses to enhance their understanding of medication safety and the systems and strategies that will improve safety and reduce the risk of avoidable adverse health outcomes for patients. The workshop explores the NSQHS Standards related to medication safety and the implications for nurses of medication safety. It examines high-risk medicines and appropriate actions by the health care team to ensure that medicines are prescribed, dispensed, stored and administrated safely. Differences in reporting mechanisms when encountering medicine errors and adverse events and examination of medicine error case studies via a practical workshop approach are integral learning outcomes included in this two day workshop. The safety features of smart infusion pumps and premixed IV medications that help reduce medication errors are demonstrated with opportunities for participants to practice setting up a smart infusion pump. On completion of the workshop participants will better able to identify and implement systems and strategies for reducing medication errors and improving patient safety within their clinical practice and organisational workplace. This workshop is presented by Dr Michele Chandler, PhD, MN(Hons), BN, RN. Dr Chandler has had multiple years of experience in the registered nursing and education sectors, including clinical leadership and research, critical incident management, root cause analysis, policy development, risk and compliance, medication safety, e-learning and education. Having recently worked in the medication safety unit at the Australian Commission for Safety and Quality in Health Care (ACSQHC), Dr Chandler has a hands on knowledge of the elements of medication safety in high risk environments. She holds a Master’s degree and PhD and has substantial experience in curriculum development and delivering energetic workshops around risk management and medicine safety. Her vast experience in root cause analysis, incident management and critical events investigation places her as a leader in this field. Dr Chandler currently sits as a Director for the MAEVIS Group, who deliver an extensive range of services and clinical support including root cause analysis and medication safety training to health and aged care sectors.

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If you want to expand your knowledge of medication safety and hear from a leading expert in this field, book your place in this important workshop, which will be held in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Launceston from March through to June (for dates visit www.acn.edu.au/cpd). This workshop is supported by Baxter Healthcare Pty Ltd and there are limited places available at no fee. To enroll, phone 1800 265 534 or email studentservices@acn.edu.au.
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