The implementation of a successful medication safety program in a primary care.

RATIONALE, AIMS, AND OBJECTIVES: Improving patient safety is now a government priority in many economically developed and underdeveloped countries. Various medication safety interventions and programs that have been described in the literature focus on hospital settings, and only very few studies report on the implementation of such interventions in primary care. The main objectives of this study were firstly to describe the steps involved for the successful implementation of a medication safety program in primary care in rural Australia and secondly to report on its evaluation and provide recommendations for future initiatives.

METHOD

The implementation of the medication safety program within the study organization included several steps, and these were as follows: collection of baseline medications incidents within the organization over the last 2 years, delivery of a medication safety training to clinicians working within the organization, formation of a medication safety group, and implementation of the newly developed medication safety guidelines within the organization. Clinicians' knowledge, behaviour, confidence, and satisfaction were also collected before and after the implementation.

RESULTS

The results show that medication safety training has improved clinicians' knowledge, confidence, behaviour, and utilization positively. There was a significant increase in the clinicians' confidence and satisfaction in applying the training to their daily practice (P value of 0.02). The implementation of the medication safety program across the study organization sites relied on 3 main stages. These were connect and communicate, collaboration, and consolidation. In the first stage of the project, we focused on identifying the key issues contributing to medication errors across the organization using an evidence-based approach to identify the types of medications errors.

CONCLUSION

The success of the implementation of a collaborative medication safety program within a large organization is dependent on emphasizing a wide culture of patient safety and understanding the medication incident reports within an organization.