Collaborative approaches to medication safety in Victorian hospitals

Adverse events are common in hospitalised patients, a large proportion being caused by medications. A significant number of these medication-related adverse events, namely medication errors and near-misses, are preventable. Despite evidence that many medication safety related problems experienced by hospitals are similar, there is a lack of coordination in the approaches that hospitals and other organisations take to address these problems. Consistency and collaboration are essential considerations throughout the process of medication safety improvement. Consistent data are needed to inform the development strategies to mitigate medication safety related events; this includes consistent definitions, reporting, classifications and analyses. Collaboration is required for purposes of comparison and benchmarking, and also generally to reduce repetition, wastage of resources and complexity in health care. Collaboration can create consistency; in turn, consistency can help achieve collaboration. The themes of consistency and collaboration are the cornerstones in the four discrete but linked projects described in this thesis.