What do pharmacies need to do when a medication incident or near miss occurs?

If a medication incident occurs, it is the College’s expectation that the pharmacy staff act promptly to provide appropriate support for the patient. They must record the incident and activate the quality improvement process. This includes documenting what happened, analyzing the incident to determine contributing factors, working to identify how it can be prevented from recurring, and taking the necessary steps to accomplish that goal by applying and sharing quality improvement strategies with their teams.

The same process must also be followed for near misses, which provide valuable insight into areas of risk, and may indicate where systems can be improved to prevent harm.