Journal of Pharmacovigilance

Relevance of foreign alerts and newsletters for the medication errors reporting programme in the Netherlands: An explorative retrospective study

4^th International Conference and Exhibition on Pharmacovigilance & Clinical Trials

August 10-12, 2015 London, UK

Ka-Chun Cheung

Posters-Accepted Abstracts: J Pharmacovigilance

Abstract:

Introduction: National reporting programmes usually collect and analyse medication error reports from healthcare providers in their own country and only disseminate guidance to healthcare providers within the borders of their country. It is unclear how many different national programmes could learn from each other. The aim of this study was therefore to explore to what extent alerts and newsletters about medication errors issued in other countries could also be relevant for the Netherlands. Methods: Ninety disseminated information items that had been issued by three national programmes (Canada, the USand the UK) in the period from June 2009 until June 2012 were collected. These items were compared with the national reporting programme, Central Medication Incidents Registration (CMR-NL) in The Netherlands. Each selected item was subsequently assessed independently with six assessment criteria: is the medicine available in the Netherlands? If so, could a similar error occur in the Netherlands? Did theCMR-NL reporting programme receive any reports about acomparable (or even identical) error? If so, did these reports include any errors with serious temporary or permanent harm? Did the CMR-NL disseminate output about it? If so, what was the dissemination date of CMR-NL? Results: From the 90 items, 87.8% (n=79) were relevant for Dutch healthcare. For 43 of the 90 items (47.8%), the CMR-NL had received comparable (or even identical) errors but had not disseminated any alert or newsletter about these errors. The CMR-NL had disseminated an alert or newsletter for 14 of the 90 items (15.6%). Conclusion: This study showed for a broad range of errorsthat the Dutch national reporting programme could learn from the three reporting programmes in Canada, the US and the UK. National reporting programmes can benefit from sharing alerts and newsletters that enhance the learning between countries.