Performance measurements concerning patient safety in outpatient pharmacy

Patient Safety is a healthcare discipline that refers to the reporting, analysis and prevention of medical errors that can cause adverse healthcare events. It is a developing field of research in which interdisciplinary knowledge from a wide range of fields is borrowed and applied. These disciplines include medicine, pharmacy, human factors engineering, psychology and anthropology. Patient Safety in Outpatient Pharmacies is a sub category of ‘Patient Safety’ and has similar definition to patient safety but focuses only on outpatients, generally in the context where they receive medication from pharmacies. There is room for medication delivery errors in this context and the project explores this discipline. These errors can cause varied levels of harm to the patients’ health. In this report, firstly, a brief introduction will be given to patient safety and outpatient medication delivery. Following that, the objectives and scope of this project will be stated. The literature review comprises of basic concepts in patient safety and the description of past research studies in the field of patient safety. This review will be followed by a detailed description of the observational research studies conducted in outpatient pharmacy settings and the findings from these studies will be presented. Consequently, the data collected will be analysed and ideas that indicate the possibility of improving the current medication dispensing system will be put forward.Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical Engineering