KEY TERM
Addiction
Compulsive and uncontrollable use of a drug substance for reasons other than prescribed.
Contaminated product error:
Error when aseptic technique is not followed in compounding and the drug is no longer sterile, causing microorganism infection.
Extra dose error
Error in which more doses are received by a patient than were prescribed by the physician.
iPledge program:
Specific risk assessment program for istretinoin with a high incidence of birth defects if not properly monitored.
MEDMARX
Internet‑based program of the USP for hospitals and healthcare systems for documenting, tracking, and identifying trends for adverse events and medication errors.
Adverse drug error:
An error that occurs when the prescribed drug initiates an allergy or an adverse drug interaction flag that was missed.
Distraction error
Error when a technician or pharmacist is interrupted in the middle of a filling process and forgets parts of the task or some information, so a safety check gets missed.
Fear error
Error when a technician fears the consequences of speaking up and asking the pharmacist or the prescriber to double-check an element of the prescription.
Medguide
Printed information in which the FDA communicates side effects , adverse reactions, black box warnings for high risk drugs.
MedWatch
Voluntary program by the FDA that allows any healthcare professional or consumer to report a serious adverse event associated with the use of any drug, biologic, device, or dietary supplement.
ADR (adverse drug reaction)
Negative consequence to a patient from taking a particular drug, due to the nature of the drug itself, especially for certain vulnerable populations.
Documentation error
Error when essential information is not properly noted, such as prescription, allergy,paitent request or other information in the medication profile or billing.
Human failure
Error generated by a failure that occurs at an individual level.
Medication education error
:Error when the proper medication education materials and counsel are not passed on to the patient or medication administrator.
Mislabeling error
Error when a medication has incorrect information on it leading to the wrong use of it, or the wrong patient receiving it.
Alert fatigue
When the technician and or pharmacist starts to have a relaxed attitude and bypasses drug utilization warnings.
Drug seeker
Paitent who is dependent on or addictied to druge who may receive prescriptions for the same or similar controlled drugs from several physicians and pharmacies.
Incomplete information
Error when full information is not available because the patient was not asked sufficient or proper questions, the prescriber was not fully specific in the profile, or the pharmacy software does not have enough safety checks, or the user bypassed it by accident or memory error.
Medication error
Any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is in the control of a healthcare proffesional, paitent or consumer.
Omission error
Administration error in which a prescribed dose is not given.
Capture error
Error that occurs when focus on a task is diverted elsewhere, and the error goes undetected.
Drug tolerance
When the body adapts to a drug so that higher doses are needed to produce the same pharmacological effect.
Incorrect assumption error:
Error when an essential piece of information cannot be verified yet an assumption is still made.
Medication noncompliace:
Failure to take medication therapy as the physician instructs also called nonadherence.
Patient Safety Organizations (PSOs)
Groups designed to collect and analyze error data from more than one health provider and offer quality improvement councils.