According to the Ministry of Health (MOH), the Pharmaceutical Services Department at Mina El-Wadi Hospital has activated the Medication Safety Program, targeting the hospital’s medical staff (physicians, pharmacists, and nurses); to ensure the safety of patients among pilgrims. The program is meant to apply quality standards in the basic safety requirements at hospitals of the holy sites; to reduce or prevent medical and medication errors.
The Program Includes conducting departmental workshops. Hence, policies and procedures have been developed to be applied in the hospital, in line with policies and procedures approved by the Saudi Central Board for Accreditation of Healthcare Institutions (CBAHI).
The most important of these policies are the documentation and recording of medication errors and side effects, improving patient safety by preventing errors, which may occur from high-risk medications that are similar in shape and sound, presenting a list of abbreviations prohibited in medical prescriptions and recipes, and restricting antibiotics dispensing in line with local and international policies and therapy guides. Also, the most important of the Program polices are developing a system for prescribing and dispensing narcotic medications and psychotropic substances, as well as setting rules and guidelines for intravenous medications, rules and guidelines for antidotes, medication instructions for their validity after opening, in addition to other strategies and policies of the Medication Safety Program to ensure patient safety and provide better pharmaceutical care