Monitor, reduce and prevent the adverse outcomes for ensuring patient safety

Despite the considerable efforts and initiatives about patient’s safety, medical errors are major causes of in- and out-patients’ morbidity and mortality. Healthcare providers, policymakers are trying to improve patient’s safety but medical errors still become the third leading cause of death in the USA. It is estimated 230 000 medication-related hospital admission a year that could be prevented by proper planning and the use of modern technology. Therefore, it is high time to implement a series of measures to reduce the number of medical errors, fostering sophisticated technology, ensuring transparency rather than blame. Walter et al. [1] conducted a study to assess the prevalence of adverse events (AE) and to examine its association with factors related to the patients and hospital admission. Their methodology was based on the Iberoamericand study of AEs, reported that the prevalence of AE was 12.8%, and 43% of AE were preventable. However, urgent admission, submission to a surgical procedure and immunosuppressive therapy had positive association with AE occurrence. It is known that AE would result in unnecessary hospitalization or extended hospital stay. To avoid all AE, more attention should be paid to high-risk factors.

Medication errors are among the most common medical errors. Due to the complexity of the drug treatment process, it can occur in writing or type the prescription, manufacturing the formulation, dispensing the formulation, administration and so on. The rapid improvement in the computerized physician order entry and clinical decision support system (CDSS) to prevent medication errors. Bettina et al. [2] evaluated the effectiveness of complex automated mediation system (cAMS) which including automated dispensing cabinet, automated unit-dose dispensing and barcode medication administration. During 20-month follow-up, the paper is similar to the most paper of CDSS that cAMS contributed to reducing the risk of administration errors in the intervention unit. More, they also observed the different type of medication errors in this paper, for but the omission of the dose was the most clinical error and lack of documentation was the most procedural errors. It can provide useful information to make more effective policy to avoid medication errors. From data to knowledge, it is easily figured out the most important risk for AE or medication errors. Implementation of knowledge into practice such as create a better system would help to increase patient safety. However, special attention must be taken to effectiveness and usability of CDSS and collect feedback to modify it.