Medication Safety Programme

The Medication Safety Programme includes proactive and reactive components.

The proactive component involves:

• Review of national and international standards relating to medication safety and the adoption of these in the hospital, where possible
• Sharing of data and development of collaborative action plans with frontline staff in order to mitigate risk
• Design and delivery of staff training and education initiatives to increase awareness of risks and promote best practices in relation to medication use.

The reactive component involves the operation of a reporting system for medication safety events (actual medication errors, near misses and adverse drug reactions) within the hospital. Reports are analysed in order to identify trends, establish root causes and generate proposals for system changes to help reduce the risk of a recurrence of an adverse event.

One of the ways the Medication Safety Programme in St James’s Hospital shares learning is through a project called the ‘Medication Safety Minute’.

These ‘Minutes’ are bite-sized weekly, medication safety messages for prescribers, which take just 1 minute to read. The messages are designed for St James’s Hospital and circulated within the hospital but are also used for undergraduate and postgraduate training in Trinity College Dublin and the Royal College of Physicians, Ireland.

The ‘Minutes’ can be accessed by the wider healthcare community via the dedicated Twitter site @medsafetymin; by accessing a free digital flipbook here or by individual hospitals/ healthcare organisations subscribing to a weekly email of the latest publication.

To request a weekly email receipt of the Minute for your healthcare organisation, please email Eileen Relihan, Medication Safety Facilitator at erelihan@stjames.ie.