Prevention of Medical and Medication Errors

Course overview

This 2-hour course provides healthcare professionals with an overview of medical and medication error prevention, patient safety principles, and strategies to reduce preventable harm in clinical practice. Participants will review the impact of medical errors, national patient safety goals, CMS accountability measures, and common causes of errors, including communication failures, incomplete information, human factors, patient misidentification, technical issues, and poor hand-off communication. The course also covers methods used to evaluate and prevent errors, including Root Cause Analysis, the Five Whys technique, Is/Is Not Analysis, and Failure Mode and Effects Analysis. Emphasis is placed on practical prevention strategies, including two patient identifiers, standardized communication, read-back protocols, SBAR hand-off communication, medication safety, high-alert medication precautions, avoiding error-prone abbreviations, surgical safety through the Universal Protocol, and infection prevention through hand hygiene and Standard Precautions.