A Pharmacist's Guide to Preventing Vaccine Errors

Pharmacy Times Office of Continuing Professional Education

A Pharmacist's Guide to Preventing Vaccine Errors

Michael J. Gaunt, PharmD

Medication Safety Analyst Editor, ISMP Medication Safety Alert!

Community/Ambulatory Care Edition

Institute for Safe Medication Practices

Donna Horn, RPh, DPh

Director, Patient Safety—Community Pharmacy Institute for Safe Medication Practices

Michael J. Gaunt, PharmD, discloses that his spouse is an employee of Merck & Co, Inc.

Donna Horn, RPh, DPh, has no relevant affiliations or financial relationships to disclose related to this activity.

Pharmacy Times Office of Continuing Professional Education

Judy V. Lum, MPA; Ann C. Lichti, CCMEP; and Donna Fausak have no relevant affiliations or financial relationships to disclose related to this activity.

Pharmacy Times Editorial

Bea Riemschneider, Jennifer Barrio, and David Allikas have no relevant affiliations or financial relationships to disclose related to this activity.

PTOCPE has resolved conflicts of interest for this activity by the use of an anonymous, external peer review and content validation process. The peer reviewer does not have any relevant financial relationships with commercial interests and this CPE activity references the best evidence available.

Educational Objectives

Upon completion of this educational activity, participants should be able to:

• Describe commonly reported medication errors involving vaccines.
• Explain the issues related to vaccine mix-ups between DTaP and Tdap.
• Recognize the error potential associated with preparing and reconstituting certain vaccines.
• Understand the contributing factors that may lead to vaccine errors.
• Identify system-based risk-reduction strategies that pharmacies can employ to prevent vaccine errors.

Target audience:

Pharmacists

Type of activity:

Knowledge

Release date:

May 10, 2012

Expiration date:

May 10, 2014

Estimated time to complete activity:

2 hours

Fee:

This lesson is free online

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