Coalition recommends drug safety procedures
A coalition of health care organizations is offering recommendations for reducing adverse drug events and stresses that the problem cannot be solved by either government or individual health care organizations working alone.
The advice comes from the National Patient Safety Partnership, made up of Veterans Affairs, the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, the American Nurses’ Asso -ci ation, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, the Joint Commission on Accredit ation of Health care Organizations, and the Associ ation of Ameri can Medical Colleges. The group encourages health care practitioners and health care provider organizations to commit to certain best, or model, practices and work together to implement them in partnership with consumers, patient advocacy groups, and the pharmaceutical industry. These are the group’s recommendations:
• Put allergies/medications on patient records.
• Stress dose adjustment in children/older adults.
• Limit access to high-hazard drugs.
• Use protocols for high-hazard drugs.
• Computerize drug order entry.
• Use pharmacy-based IV/drug mixing programs.
• Avoid abbreviations.
• Standardize drug packaging, labeling, storage.
• Use "unit dose" drug systems (packaged and labeled in standard patient doses).
• Require machine-readable labels (bar coding).
• Buy drugs with prominent display of name, strength, warnings.
• Buy "unit of use" or "unit dose" packaging.
• Buy IV solutions with two-sided labeling.
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