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Showing results for tags 'Medication'.
Found 1,165 results
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Content Article
Royal Pharmaceutical Society: Pharmacy alerts
Claire Cox posted an article in Medication
Keep up to date with changes affecting your practice, including drug news, safety updates, drug alerts, legislative changes and new guidance or standards. These drug safety alerts are updated regularly by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. -
Content Article
Falsified medicines and medical devices: MHRA campaign
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Medication
Fake medicines and medical devices bought online can lead to serious negative health consequences. Buying from dodgy websites also increases the risk of being ripped off through credit card fraud or having your identity stolen. The #FakeMeds campaign, run by Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), helps you protect your health and money by providing quick and easy tools so you can avoid fake medical products when you shop online. -
Content ArticlePrescribing errors affect patient safety, but pharmacists and other healthcare professionals can reduce the risk of them occurring. In this article published in The Pharmaceutical Journal, David Cousins and colleagues describe the most important types of prescribing errors, medicines and situations responsible for causing death and severe harm to patients. It also provides advice on how to avoid these errors occurring.
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Content Article
How to investigate and manage a medication incident
Claire Cox posted an article in Medication
Of the nearly 237 million medication errors occurring in England each year, 28% have the potential to cause harm. This article published in The Pharmaceutical Journal outlines the immediate steps to be taken following identification of a medicines safety incident. -
Content Article
Medication errors: where do they happen? (February 2019)
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Medication
Reducing medicines-related harm requires a clear understanding of where and when errors occurs. This infographic published in The Pharmaceutical Journal shows visually the latest estimates in England per year and offers potential solutions. -
Content ArticleSince the 2007 landmark report on Preventing Medication Errors from the US National Academy of Medicine, effective interventions have been developed to address medication errors. Despite this, medication errors persist as the most common source of harm for patients worldwide. In this Editorial, Albert Wu looks at whether WHO's “The 5 Moments for Medication Safety” as a patient engagement tool has reached its intended audience.
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Content ArticleHomecare medicines services deliver medicines and provide medicine-related care to patients in their homes, for example, teaching them to self-inject, and delivering medicine that might need special transport. In this report, the House of Lords Public Services Committee highlights concerns about multiple reports of delays and errors by homecare providers, resulting in patients receiving care later than scheduled. The report states that this key service is not working the way it should and, in some cases, is causing patients serious harm.
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Content ArticlePrimary care services provide an entry point into the health system which directly impact's people well-being and their use of other healthcare resources. Patient safety has been recognised as an issue of global importance for the past 10 years. Unsafe primary and ambulatory care results in greater morbidity, higher healthcare usage and economic costs. According to data from World Health Organization (WHO), the risk of a patient dying from preventable medical accident while receiving health care is 1 in 300, which is much higher than risk of dying while travelling in an airplane. Unsafe medication practices and inaccurate and delayed diagnosis are the most common causes of patient harm which affects millions of patients globally. However, the majority of the work has been focused on hospital care and there is very less understanding of what can be done to improve patient safety in primary care. Provision of safe primary care is priority as every day millions of people use primary care services across the world. The paper from Kuriakose et al., published in the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care, focuses on various aspects of patient safety, especially in the primary care settings and also provides some potential solutions in order to reduce patient harm as much as possible. Some important challenges regarding patient safety in India are also highlighted.
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Content ArticleAlthough most current medication error prevention systems are rule-based, these systems may result in alert fatigue because of poor accuracy. Previously, we had developed a machine learning (ML) model based on Taiwan’s local databases (TLD) to address this issue. However, the international transferability of this model is unclear. This study examines the international transferability of a machine learning model for detecting medication errors and whether the federated learning approach could further improve the accuracy of the model. It found that the ML model has good international transferability among US hospital data. Using the federated learning approach with local hospital data could further improve the accuracy of the model.
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Content ArticleMaking data on medical interventions easier to collect and collate would increase the odds of spotting patterns of harm, according to the panel of a recent HSJ webinar. When Baroness Julia Cumberlege was asked to review the avoidable harm caused by two medicines and one medical device, she encountered no shortage of data. “We found that the NHS is awash with data, but it’s very fractured,” says Baroness Cumberlege, who chaired the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review and now co-chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group which raises awareness of and support for its findings. It was a challenge on which Professor Sir Terence Stephenson had cause to deeply reflect back in 2014. That was the year in which he was asked to chair an independent review of medical devices, following concerns about the safety of metal-on-metal hip replacements and PIP silicone breast implants. “The NHS stepped up to the plate really quickly and said: ‘Even if it’s a private hospital that put this in, we will take it out to protect your safety,’” recalled Sir Terence, now Nuffield professor of child health at Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health and chair of the Health Research Authority for England. “But the big problem was they couldn’t identify who had which implants. No doubt somebody somewhere had written this down with a fountain pen and then someone spilt the tea over it and the unique information was lost.”
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Content Article
Safe care for people with diabetes in hospital (January 2020)
Patient-Safety-Learning posted an article in Diabetes
This article in the journal Clinical Medicine looks at the safety of people with diabetes when they are admitted to hospital as an inpatient. Having diabetes in hospital is associated with increased harm. Although the National Diabetes Inpatient Audit has shown that inpatient care for people with diabetes has slowly improved over the last few years, there are still challenges in terms of providing appropriate staffing and education. Progress is still needed to ensure the safety of people with diabetes in hospital. The authors look at some of the key areas of concern for people with diabetes in hospital, including increased risk of hypoglycaemia, hyperglycaemia (including diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) and hyperosmolar hyperglycaemia state), medication errors, hospital acquired foot ulcers, increased length of stay and overall increase in death. -
Content Article
Video: Living with schizophrenia (6 July 2023)
Patient-Safety-Learning posted an article in Mental health
In this video, Chris tells his story of how he dealt with a traumatic childhood and subsequent diagnosis of schizophrenia. He talks about the medication and therapy that have helped him. Warning: The film does contain references to distressing themes. -
Content Article
Top picks for Mental Health Day
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Mental health
This year, WHO's World Mental Health Day on 10 October will focus on the theme 'Mental health is a universal human right'. To mark World Mental Health Day, we’ve pulled together 10 resources, blogs and reports from the hub that focus on improving patient safety across different aspects of mental health services. -
Content ArticleThis article in The Lancet aimed to review published work about the efficacy and safety of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) with simulated ECT, ECT versus pharmacotherapy and different forms of ECT for patients with depressive illness. The authors designed a systematic overview and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials and observational studies. They concluded that: ECT is an effective short-term treatment for depression, and is probably more effective than drug therapy. bilateral ECT is moderately more effective than unilateral ECT. high dose ECT is more effective than low dose.
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Content ArticlePublic and patient expectations of treatment influence health behaviours and decision-making. This study aimed to understand how the media has portrayed the therapeutic use of ketamine in psychiatry. It found that ketamine treatment was portrayed in an extremely positive light, with significant contributions of positive testimony from key opinion leaders (e.g. clinicians). Positive research results and ketamine's rapid antidepressant effec were frequently emphasised, with little reference to longer-term safety and efficacy. The study concluded that information pertinent to patient help-seeking and treatment expectations is being communicated through the media and supported by key opinion leaders, although some quotes go well beyond the evidence base. Clinicians should be aware of this and may need to address their patients’ beliefs directly.
