Medication safety monitoring programme in public acute hospitals - an overview of findings.

As modern medicine continues to advance, increasing medication treatment options are available for patients with proven benefit for treating illness and preventing disease. This advancement has brought with it an increase in the risks, errors and adverse events associated with medication use. While most medication errors do not result in patient harm, medication errors have the potential to result in catastrophic harm or death to patients in some instances. Medication safety has been identified internationally as a key area for improvement in all healthcare settings. 2 In March 2017 the World Health Organization (WHO) identified Medication Safety as the theme of the third Global Patient Safety Challenge. This global safety initiative aims to address the weaknesses in health systems that lead to medication errors and the severe harm that may result. The WHO sets out its specific aim to ‘reduce the level of severe avoidable harm related to medications by 50% over 5 years globally’.3 This global safety initiative is also a key area for improvement in an Irish contex