WHO's Medication Without Harm series: Medication safety in high-risk situations

Part of the ongoing series of monthly webinars on WHO Global Patient Safety Challenge: Medication Without Harm.

Unsafe medication practices and medication errors are a leading cause of injury and avoidable harm in health care systems across the world.  WHO Patient Safety Flagship has initiated a series of monthly webinars on the topic of “WHO Global Patient Safety Challenge: Medication Without Harm”,. The main objective of the webinar series is support implementation of this WHO Global Patient Safety Challenge: Medication Without Harm at the country level. Considering the huge burden of medication-related harm, Medication Safety has also been selected as the theme for World Patient Safety Day 2022.

In the context of medication safety, high-risk situations relate to those circumstances associated with a significant risk of medication-related harm, such as situations arising from look-alike, sound-alike (LASA) medications and high-alert medications. High-risk situations could be triggered by one or more of the following broad factors: medication, provider and patient, and systems factors (work environment).

Organisations need to prospectively design and implement strategies to identify high-risk situations related to medications and build a robust system that intercepts them before they result in patient harm.

At this webinar, WHO will present the WHO technical report on “Medication Safety in High-risk Situations” and experiences from different countries and organizations will be shared on how to address high-risk situations and reduce the risk of medication-related harm.

Register