National
The Australian Council for Safety and Quality in Health Care
http://www.safetyandquality.org
The Australian Council for Safety and Quality in Health Care
was established in January 2000 by Australian Health Ministers
to lead national efforts to improve the safety and quality of
health care provision in Australia.
The Australian Patient Safety Foundation
http://www.apsf.net.au
The APSF provides leadership in the reduction of harm to patients
in all health care environments, through its incident management
system, known as AIMS (Australian Incident Monitoring System).
Introduced in 1996, AIMS is now used in many healthcare systems
within Australia to identify and analyse things that go wrong
in healthcare delivery.
Australian Drug Reactions Advisory Committee (ADRAC)
http://www.tga.gov.au/adr/adrac.htm
The Adverse Drug Reactions Advisory Committee (ADRAC) is a subcommittee
of the Australian Drug Evaluation Committee (ADEC) and was formed
in 1970 to advise the TGA on the safety of medicines. It is composed
of independent medical experts who have expertise in areas of
importance to the evaluation of medicine safety.
QUM Map
http://www.qummap.net.au/public/index.asp
The aim of this project is to provide a comprehensive map of
current major quality use of medicines (QUM) initiatives in Australia.
The project will provide a resource to inform people working in
the QUM area of existing resources, expertise and complementary
work. The project is funded and coordinated by the Commonwealth
Department of Health and Aged Care.
Medication Safety Web Site
The Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine at the University of Tasmania
have developed a medication safety web site at www.medsafety.net.
It features learning modules developed around case studies involving
medication errors. There is also a full text search, extensive
links to online medication safety information, a quiz for each
module and links to a discussion forum.
State
NSW Health Quality and Clinical Policy Branch
http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/quality/
The NSW Department of Health is responsible for monitoring and
managing public health risks and improving public health through
regulation, health promotion and other public health measures.
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International
Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research
http://www.ahcpr.gov/qual/errorsix.htm
The AHQR is becoming a portal of sorts for patient safety policy
and learning in the United States. Working with other federal
agencies that collect adverse event information, the AHQR is conducting
analysis from event information, and will disseminate knowledge
as it's acquired. They are also supporting research related to
system failures that cause events and errors.
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement
http://www.ihi.org
IHI President Don Berwick, MD, is on the Board of the NHS Modernisation
Agency. His organisation, IHI, conducts extremely popular seminars
around their "Breakthrough" methodology, which focuses
on reducing adverse drug events and medical errors.
The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare
http://www.jcaho.org
The JCAHO was one of the early resources on adverse events,
through its "sentinel events" programme. All accredited
organisations (90% of hospitals) must conduct a formal root cause
analysis for every sentinel event (pre-specified events) and determine
the root causes of systems failures related to the event. Their
methodology, advice, and some data are available on certain areas
of their website. In particular, users might want to go to: http://www.jointcommission.org/SentinelEvents/SentinelEventAlert/ to read through what the JCAHO has learned about real adverse
events in their accredited hospitals. And even though their data
covers only 1,030 events over several years, there is good data.
The Institute for Safe Medication Practices
http://www.ismp.org
The ISMP, which is in America, started talking about medication
errors before anyone in the U.S. believed there was a problem.
Their Medication Safety Alerts are very well-received and come
with membership.
The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (Canada)
http://www.ismp-canada.org
National Patient Safety Foundation
http://www.npsf.org
This website was launched by the American Medical Association.
It contains many excellent references to patient safety material
and resources. In particular, you might want to tap into the NPSF's
discussion area of the site, which allows you to observe and participate
in dialogue and sharing on patient safety.
US Pharmacopeia
http://www.usp.org
USP establishes state-of-the-art standards to ensure the quality
of medicines for human and veterinary use. USP also develops authoritative
information about the appropriate use of medicines. National health
care practitioner reporting programs support USP's standards and
information programs. In addition, USP supports many public service
programs.
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