Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) and High-alert Medications (Nursing)

00:01 Hi, welcome to our video series.

00:03 I wanna introduce you to the ISMP.

00:06 This is a group of medications that have risk for adverse effects so they have high risk for our patients.

00:13 So that's why we've titled this ISMP high risk medications.

00:18 Let me clarify. Okay, so who is the ISMP? Well, ISMP stands for Institute for Safe Medication Practices.

00:28 Now, this is an independent watchdog organization so they're separate from physicians, nurses, other health care providers.

00:36 Their only job is to make sure that our patients are safe.

00:41 So they want -- in regards to safe medication practices, these are some of the things they do.

00:47 They don't take any money from advertisers so they can stay independent and objective.

00:53 So they depend entirely on charitable donations, educational grants, newsletter subscriptions, and volunteer efforts because their work, as they describe it, is life-saving.

01:05 That's the goal. To keep us aware and alert to issues with medication.

01:10 So what are high-alert medications? Well, here's the official definition from them.

01:15 High-alert medications are drugs that have been identified as having a higher risk of significant patient harm if they're used in error.

01:24 So they're great drugs when used in the appropriate manner that can be really beneficial to patients but if they're used in error, it could cause significant patient harm.

01:35 So although mistakes may or may not be more common with these drugs, the potential consequences of an error are clearly more devastating than other medications.

01:44 So the purpose of the list is to help you and I. We're on the health care team.

01:49 So they're trying to help us determine which medications require special safeguards to reduce the risk of errors.

01:57 So these are actually really helpful.

02:00 This will benefit us by knowing it's just an extra safeguard for us to be aware.

02:04 Hey, look, this medication has potential serious risks for patients so I'm gonna use extra safeguards to make sure I'm safe in administering those.

02:14 So when you ask what is the ISMP list? That's what it is. It's created periodically with updates.

02:21 It gives you a list of potential high-alert medications based on data that they've collected from multiple sources.

02:28 So that's what the list is.

02:30 Now, I'm gonna give you a website on where the latest version is that so you can check it out on your own.

02:35 But here's kind of the process of how they develop this list.

02:38 There's specific classes or categories of specific medications.

02:42 So how do they win this award? How the medications make it to the list? Well, they look at error reports that are submitted to the ISMP.

02:51 It's called the National Medication Errors Reporting Program.

02:55 So a medication error happens somewhere in the health care system, it can be reported to this agency. Now, we can also review literature.

03:03 So any studies and research studies that are out there that would give information that would have a drug make the list.

03:10 And lastly, they take straight up input from people like us, practitioners and safety experts, on what could be a potential risk.

03:19 So 3 main sources: error reports that are submitted to the ISMP, what's out there in the literature, and input from people that are actually delivering health care and safety experts.