World Patient Safety Day Theme – Medication Safety

What is the theme for World Patient Safety Day 2022?

Medication Safety has been selected by WHO as the theme for World Patient Safety Day 2022. The slogan for this year is, “Medication Without Harm”

What is the color for World Patient Safety Day 2022?

Every year, World Patient Safety Day is represented by the color orange.

The Importance of Medication Safety

• Drugs are one of the biggest causes of harm in healthcare
• In patients, opiates are a major cause leading to 20% of adverse drug events
• Substantial harm is done in OPD settings as well

Medication errors are common, but most of them have little or no potential for harm. A small proportion of the potential adverse drug events do pose a potential harm to patient, but most of those are not severe.

The ones that we're most concerned about are preventable adverse drug events and the ones that may be fatal or cause irreversible damage.

Objectives of World Patient Safety Day 2022:

1. Raising global awareness of the harm caused due to medication
2. Engaging with key healthcare providers and systems to improve medication safety
3. Encouraging patients and families to be actively involved
4. Scaling up implementation of the WHO Global Patient Safety Challenge

What can hospitals and healthcare providers do to reduce medication-related harm?

• Computerized Order Entry
• Decision Support Systems that red flag wrong medications or combinations
• Bar Coding & Dispensing Systems
• Medication reconciliation & EHR
• Smart Pumps that regulate injected medication dosage
• Take advantage of the education and skills of Pharmacists
• Enabling electronic prescriptions

What should you know as a patient to prevent harm due to medication errors?

• Keep your medical records organized and make sure your treating doctors are aware of other medications you are taking, allergies you may have, etc. Keep your family health history, personal health history, lab reports, and prescriptions by other doctors with you. Make sure you have this record in duplicate or electronic copies so that you do not lose them.

• Store medicines in a smart way - Each year over 60,000 children are admitted to hospitals for consuming medicines that were not meant for them.
  • Keep all medicines, including vitamins, out of reach of children
  • Close medicine caps tightly and ensure that you quickly put the medicine away after taking it
  • If you have guests or visitors or extended family members in a house with children, advise them of safe storage

• Before you take any medication:
  • Know well about it and what it does
  • Understand the dosage and the recommended timings
  • Ask your doctor about side effects, before stopping medicines or starting them, and for any information, you do not understand