Statement 5.6

“Hospital pharmacists should identify high-risk medicines and ensure appropriate procedures are implemented in procurement, prescribing, preparing, dispensing, administration and monitoring processes to minimise risk.”

What does it mean for patients? Errors with high risk medicines may be fatal for patients, it is therefore necessary that independent check procedures prior to administration are implemented. Hospital pharmacists should be involved in this process to ensure patient safety

What does it mean for healthcare professionals? The prescription of high risk medicines is prone to errors which could be fatal and should be validated by hospital pharmacists prior to dispensing, compounding or administration.  High risk medicines should be checked for the “seven rights” prior to administration independently by two health care professionals according to the appropriate and approved in-process checking.

What does it mean for Hospital Pharmacists? implementation of the procedures.

Examples of best practice are e.g.

• abelling of intravenous tubing 
near insertion site to prevent 
misconnections
• use of enteral feeding catheters 
that cannot be connected with intravenous or other parenteral lines
• dispensing ready-to-administer dilutions of concentrated electrolyte products (such as potassium chloride and sodium chloride)
• oral syringes that are distinctly different from hypodermic syringes