MSF 5X3: Medication safety and health informatics

Medication safety deals with the identification and prevention of medication errors. Students will learn about different types of medication errors, factors that contribute to their occurrence, their severity, and the steps required for their prevention. They will be provided with the core knowledge and skills needed to understand the background and culture of patients'92 safety, data privacy and security. Students in this course will gain experience in collecting data on medication errors, analyzing the findings, communicating with other health care professionals and administrators through a reporting mechanism, and tracking and trending an area of failure and success. The students will encourage developing their own ideas of implementing patient'92s safety, especially for those graduate seeking careers in: health-system, ambulatory, and community pharmacy management and leadership. This course will also teach the concepts and tools required to understand informatics in pharmacy practice. The field of health informatics includes the development, deployment, and use of hardware and software technologies to enhance patient care including improvements in efficiency and safety. Key items that will be discussed include software'92s, such as; electronic medical records, computerized provider order entry/e-prescribing, and clinical decision support tools as well as hardware solutions, such as; robotic dispensing/picking, bar code medication administration, and automated dispensing cabinets.