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Patient Safety Risks

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Patient Safety Risks
Medication safety continues to be one of the most significant issues in patient safety. The increase incidence of adverse drug events makes medication safety an urgent goal and should remain high on the organization’s agenda (World Health Organization, 2008).
The process of medication reconciliation identifies the most accurate and comprehensive medications list, which contains all prescription medications, herbal supplements, vaccines, vitamins, and over-the-counter medications (Barnsteiner, 2008). This is a very important part of the care transition process, in which healthcare providers come together to improve upon medication safety, as the patient goes to and from different levels of care (www.uthscsa, 2010). Medication reconciliation became a frontline matter, when the Joint Commission (JC) defined its national goals to improve a patient’s safety. The JC changed its requirements to medication reconciliation under the NPSG 03.06.01 Act, which became effective on July 1, 2011 (Steeb & Webster, 2012). Even the revised version consists only of five elements of performance instead of seventeen from the previous version. The implementation process continues to be a difficult one. Every health care provider can have a role that differs from others in the process. A general goal of medication reconciliation directed towards a patient’s safety and outcomes improvement is obtaining and maintaining the accuracy and complicity of medication information and the use of the information across the continuum of care (Steeb & Webster, 2012).
Currently, the accuracy of medication taken by patients became very challenging in the geriatric population, requiring chronic care management in ambulatory settings. Medication discrepancies (medical records versus patient list) reported in ambulatory settings vary between twenty six to eighty eight percent

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