How Can Health-System Pharmacists Best Identify Potential Medication Errors?

In this clip, Matthew Grissinger, BSPharm, offers advice for health-system pharmacists on catching potential harmful medication errors.

According to ISMP data, the top medication classes involved in reported events include:

• Narcotics/Opioids (7%)
• Antimicrobials (5.7%)
• Antipsychotics (4.6%)
• Anticoagulants (3.6%)
• Electrolytes (2.2%)
• Insulins (1.8%)
• Adrenergic Agonists (1.4%)
• Chemotherapy (1.3%)
• Neuromuscular Blockers (0.5%)

Transcript:

I think right now a typical pharmacist who works in a hospital setting, whether they are dispensing pharmacists or clinical pharmacists on the floor doing rounds are already catching many errors. The issue is is that they are not documenting the work that they are doing or quantifying those type of things that they are catching. I think pharmacists are already catching a lot of potential harmful errors and quantifying and identifying the most common calls that they are making as an example or most common conventions they are catching doing rounds. They could help identify a potential, dangerous situation by proving or just demonstrating what they are already doing.