Medication Safety

A safe use of medication is an essential part of most treatments. In our hospital 2 committees are actively promoting, monitoring and improving medication safety. The medication safety committee is a committee consisting of medical specialists, nurses and a pharmacist. This committee is involved in making and improving policies for better medication management. The second committee called VAMp and consists of nurses from all hospital departments, a hospitalist and a pharmacist. This committee is more practical and involved in improving day today processes where medication is involved.
Medication in our hospital is prescribed and administered following the rules of medication safety:

Right patient, right medication, right dose, right route of administration, right time, right reason and right documentation.

The rights of medication administration is to reduce the harm caused by medication errors.

Not only healthcare workers are involved in medication safety though, an important role herein lies within the patients themselves. These are 5 steps of awareness important to all users of medication:

In addition to the awareness steps it is important to show your caregiver (physician, pharmacist etc.) the list of medication you are currently using. This list is called an AMO (actual medication overview) and can be provided by all pharmacies and also by the hospital during admission or at discharge. Be sure to have it with you at all moments you meet with a healthcare provider, for example your family physician (dokter di cas), Emergency Department, medical specialist etc.

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