Enhancing Safety via Medication Self-Management and Timely Reporting

Abstract

Medication errors have been a major threat to patient safety. Current research on medication errors is largely dependent on in-hospital reports. With the rapid shift of health care to chronic condition management, there is an urgent need to investigate medication errors in the community. In this paper, we discuss that the model of medication self-management developed for outpatient settings may be used to guide the development of prevention strategies for medication errors beyond hospitals. Further, timely reporting medication errors from patients in the communities may be helpful in mitigating the severity of side effects and reducing preventable safety events.