Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care
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Medication Safety Alerts

Medication Safety Alerts
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Currently the Commission provides two national medication safety alerts.

  1. National high risk medication alert - Vincristine

  2. National high risk medication alert - Intravenous Potassium Chloride

Medication safety alerts are issued in response to reported incidents or for medicines with known high risks. High risk medicines include:

  • Medicines with a low therapeutic index; and

  • Medicines that present a high risk when administered by the wrong route or when other systems error occur. Medication safety alerts advise action to prevent future adverse medicine events or to lessen the risk of such events.

The aim of alerts is to:

  • Warn healthcare professionals about serious known medication risks;

  • Outline the action required to minimise risks;

  • Provide tools to minimise risk.
The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care makes available a range of medication safety alerts and guidance issued by itself, by Australian States and Territories and by international medication safety organisations.

The Commission does not warrant that the list is exhaustive. There could be other alerts, advice and guidance related to other medicines or practice areas which may be relevant to you.

The safety alerts and other guidance available on this web page are classified according to the following taxonomy:

P Potassium
I Insulin
N Narcotics
C Chemotherapy
H Heparin
S Systems

To encourage practice monitoring and improvement, each high risk drug class is mapped to tools validated in Australia. The tools are Medication Safety Self Assessment for Australian Hospitals and Indicators for Quality Use of Medicines in Australian Hospitals.

General principles for best practice in management of all high risk drugs, and relevant links to validated tools, are provided further down the page.

Acknowledgement - The Commission thanks the Victorian Medicines Advisory Committee on High Risk Medicines for allowing it to use the work developed for its high risk medicines web page. The Commission also thanks NSW Therapeutic Advisory Group (Mr David Maxwell and Dr Jocelyen Lowinger) and NSW Clinical Excellence Commission (Mr Daniel Lawlor) for their work mapping high risk drug practice into the MSSA and QUM Indicators tools.

High risk medicines

Potassium and other electolytes


Insulin


Narcotics and sedatives


Chemotherapeutic agents

Updated: 01 February, 2012

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