About the Project

Introduction | Background | How to Use These Tools | Tools | Brochure


NEW TOOLS FOR REDUCING MEDICATION ERRORS
A multidisciplinary panel of health care experts and leaders has collaborated to develop three new educational tools for reducing medication errors. Each tool addresses a discrete organizational component: strategic planning, risk assessment, and information technology.

Used together, the tools provide hospitals with a process for making fundamental, wide-ranging improvements to their medication delivery systems.


NEW COMPELLING DATA
Using the results of a landmark Medication Safety Self Assessment survey of over 1,400 hospitals, the Pathways team prototyped three tools. The prototypes were shared with participating hospitals whose feedback was incorporated into the ultimate design of the tools. By sharing their experience and expertise, participating hospitals ensured that the tools would reflect road-tested, practical methods for making improvements in medication safety.

These resulting tools provide hospitals with a process to:

  1. Incorporate medication safety initiatives into their strategic plans.
  2. Perform an organization-wide risk assessment to identify areas for improvement.
  3. Assess the organization’s readiness to implement a bar-coding system for administering medications.
ABOUT THE ISMP MEDICATION SAFETY SELF ASSESSMENT™
Data collected in the Institute for Safe Medication Practices Medication Safety Self Assessment™ (2000) provided some important facts about U.S. hospitals:
  • 43% can easily access essential patient information.
  • 53% can easily access drug information.
  • 46% have standardized safe methods for communicating medication orders.
  • 48% include patients as an active partner through effective education.
  • 41% have instituted simple redundancies for critical medications, patients,and processes.
  • 46% have established a nonpunitive,system-based approach to medication error reduction.
These findings underscore the need to make fundamental changes in the ways that medications are packaged, ordered, stored, prescribed, and administered.