PHA Safe Medication Use Sub-Committee

The sub-committee will create a confidential and blame-free system and/or processes that support reviewing medication errors and learning from them, in efforts to identify and promote medication use system designs and practices that eliminate or reduce error, thereby improving clinical outcomes for healthcare consumers. This group will also analyze and review reports on medication related sentinel events prior to submission to the PHA Peer Review Panel.

The work and tools of the Safe Medication Use Sub-Committee is largely based from resources available from the National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention (NCC MERP)

PHA Medication Error References

• Medication Error (Definition)
• Error Severity Index
• Error Classification System

ISMP has updated their list of error-prone abbreviations, symbols, and dose designations in response to The Joint Commission’s national patient safety goal requiring hospitals to prohibit the use of “dangerous” abbreviations. Effective April 1, 2004, hospitals must also add 3 items to the The Joint Commission required list of items not to be used. You may find the ISMP list of error prone abbreviations useful. Please click HERE to view.

The three items below are key protected for GHA and PHA members :

• Safe Medication Use Best Practices from PHA - Omissions
• Safe Medication Use Best Practices from PHA - General Practices
• Safe Medication Use Best Practices from PHA - Bar Coding

Council on Pharmaco-Theraputics
Committee Chairman: Ray R. Maddox, PharmD, Director of Clinical Pharmacy Services and Research at the St. Joseph 's/ Candler Health System

For more information on the Safe Medication Use Sub Committee please email us at: pha@gha.org