As an Ontario mother continues to push for mandatory prescription-error reporting across Canada, the World Health Organization (WHO) is calling for change in medication-associated harm around the world.
In March, it launched a global initiative aimed at reducing severe, avoidable medication-associated errors by 50 per cent over the next five years. The initiative is called the Global Patient Challenge on Medication Safety.
The initiative’s focus will take a close look at weaknesses in healthcare systems that lead to medication errors and can at times result in severe harm. The information collected will help to improve the way medicines are prescribed, distributed and consumed, as well as increase awareness among patients.
READ MORE: Ontario mom wants mandatory prescription-error reporting across Canada after son, 8, dies
“We all expect to be helped, not harmed, when we take medication,” said WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan.
“Apart from the human cost, medication errors place an enormous and unnecessary strain on health budgets. Preventing errors saves money and saves lives.”
The initiative comes on the heels of another initiative led by Toronto mother, Melissa Sheldrick. She lost her eight-year-old son Andrew in March 2016 after he was given the wrong medication. Since his death, Sheldrick has been lobbying for mandatory pharmaceutical error reporting in Canada.
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READ MORE: Mandatory reporting of medication errors to be implemented by Ontario pharmacies
Starting in the fall, mandatory reporting in Ontario will be implemented in phases. The first phase will begin in the fall involving up to 200 pharmacies across the province. The Ontario College of Pharmacies says, “this will allow us the necessary time to work with those pharmacies to help make sure that, as we move forward with full implementation starting in late 2018, we incorporate important learnings and insights from the first phase to support a successful roll out among the province’s more than 4,200 community pharmacies.”
But before the new policy takes effect, Nova Scotia was the only province with a mandatory requirement for its pharmacies to report errors to an independent organization
Ontario’s policy will be fully implemented across the province by December 2018. Sheldrick was part of a task force working with the Ontario College of Pharmacists on implementing the mandatory reporting model.
“The data can be collected and analyzed to see where there are gaps in the system to try and reduce the number of human errors,” Sheldrick told Global News.
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Manitoba will be launching a one-year pilot project on error reporting in the province. It will involve 20 pharmacists, who will be reporting all incidents in community pharmacies within the next year for the purpose of collecting information and data that will be used to formulate a mandatory pharmaceutical error reporting policy in that province.
Sheldrick was invited by the Manitoba College of Pharmacists to speak on a panel about the death of her son and the need for mandatory error reporting.
“It is my hope, and the College’s hope as well, that that pilot program will be phased in a permanent as of next year … I was told by a member of the College that pharmacists knew this in their head, but after I had spoken they knew it in their heart and that they were ready to go and champion the project,” Sheldrick said.
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In most provinces, pharmacies are held accountable by its governing college and error reports are not readily available to the public. But Sheldrick said she is hoping to change that practice in Canada.
She said she recently reached out to the federal Health Minister Jane Philpott by email requesting a strategy be put in place for mandatory pharmaceutical error reporting across the country. In a reply from Philpott sent to Global News by Sheldrick, the minister said the matter falls to the provinces.
“I regret to inform you that a national law requiring pharmacies to report medication errors to their provincial colleges would be outside of federal jurisdiction. Pharmacists are regulated by the provincial and territorial governments through their respective colleges and not by the federal government,” the reply said.
“However you may wish to contact the National Association of Pharmacy Regulatory Authorities (NAPRA) regarding this important issue.”
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Sheldrick said she cannot understand why the federal health minister cannot take on the task of having a conversation with the respective premiers in each province regarding mandatory pharmaceutical-error reporting. She said she plans addressing this issue with the newly-appointed Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor in the coming days.
“Health Canada’s mandate is to improve the health of Canadians. This seems like a small project on a big, big scale that can be easily communicated to each Premier and College of Pharmacists across the country in order to get this moving and I am going to challenge her to do that”, Sheldrick told Global News.
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