Question: Avoiding Adverse Events and Medication Errors

ASSIGNMENT: Interview the patient safety officer or the manager of the risk management department at your local hospital. Use the following questions as a guide to begin the interview. Present a report to your peers regarding your findings.

1. What are the most common causes of medication errors in this facility?

2. Which medications are more commonly involved in medication errors? What factors has this agency identified that cause these errors to occur?

3. What are the most common adverse events affecting patients? What precipitating factors have been identified as increasing the possibility of these adverse events?

4. What new technologies have been adopted to increase patient safety? Examples might be IV smart pumps, bar coding of medications, and computerized physician-provider order entry.

5. How are medication errors or adverse events reported? What safeguards have been built in to encourage voluntary reporting of errors? Do disincentives exist that would discourage someone from reporting such an error?

6. Are staff included in the quality control process? If so, how?

7. For which of the Joint Commission core measures are data being collected? What is the process for this data collection?