Medication errors are among the most common incidents leading to adverse events in patient care and result in considerable human suffering and unnecessary deaths. As an estimate, one medication error occurs per hospitalized patient daily, and medication errors cost tens of billions of US dollars each year. Medication errors can occur in any healthcare setting during various stages of the medication use process, including prescribing, dispensing, administering and using medicines. It has been well established that the majority of the errors would be preventable and commonly provoked by weaknesses in organizational systems and processes (i.e., system factors).
Medication errors and unsafe medication practices are a global public health issue. Despite myriad initiatives undertaken internationally, nationally and locally to improve patient safety, there is still much to do in this area. The World Health Organization (WHO) launched the Global Patient Safety Challenge on Medication Safety with a vision/goal to reduce the level of severe, avoidable harm related to medications by 50% over the next five years throughout the world(http://www.who.int/patientsafety/medication-safety/en/). The specific objectives of the challenge include: 1) To assess the scope and nature of avoidable harm and strengthen the monitoring systems to detect and track this harm; 2) To create a framework for action aimed at patients, health professionals and Member States, to facilitate improvements in ordering, prescribing, preparation, dispensing, administration and monitoring practices, which can be adopted and adapted by Member States; 3) To develop guidance, materials, technologies and tools to support the setting up of safer medication use systems for reducing medication errors; 4) To engage key stakeholders, partners and industry to raise awareness of the problem and actively pursue efforts to improve medication safety; and 5) To empower families and their carers to become actively involved and engaged in treatment or care decisions, ask questions, spot errors and effectively manage their medications. Research is needed to provide evidence-informed foundation for developing safe medication practices and following up progress in this area.
Everyone, including patients and health care professionals, has a role in ensuring medication safety. This themed issue on Medication Safety and Effectiveness in Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy will feature proposed models, original research, reviews, editorials, and commentaries from scientists worldwide and throughout healthcare, with a special interest in papers describing interventions that resulted in improved medication safety.
We welcome submission of manuscripts that are within the scope of the journal and meet its scientific criteria in the following areas/topics relating to Medication Safety:
- Theoretical foundations to promote new strategies and research paradigms in medication risk management
- Intervention studies, including those engaging multidisciplinary and systems approaches to medication safety
- Evaluations of technologies and tools to guide and manage medication safety and/or that contribute to adverse events and quality initiatives through unintended consequences
- Patient involvement in medication safety initiatives
- Strategies for learning from medication errors and risk prone processes