Medication Administration Safety

Medication incidents have been cited as a leading source of preventable adverse events in the Institute of Medicine’s 1999 report “To Err is Human” and the 2004 Canadian Adverse Event Study by Ross Baker and Peter Norton. Improving medication administration safety involves understanding system complexities including environments, processes, technologies and the diverse requirements of physicians, pharmacists, nurses and patients.

The Human Factors Healthcare Group’s Medication Administration Safety service employs human factors methods to inform optimal approaches for the end-to-end administration of medications including:
> Physician ordering
> Medication preparation
> Pharmacy labeling
> Medication administration, including infusion pump programming