Medication Safety Officers at OSF
Posted by Debbie Adlof on March 27th, 2008
In its ongoing efforts to improve patient safety, OSF Saint Francis Medical Center has created two medication safety officer positions and has named two pharmacists to fill them.
The medication safety officers are Karin Terry and Sandy Salverson, who have been pharmacists at OSF Saint Francis for seven and five years respectively. Specifically, Terry is based in the Pharmacy and is the “micro systems” medication safety officer, meaning that she primarily will be looking at safe medication processes within the Pharmacy, whereas Salverson, as part of the Safety and Quality department, is the “macro systems” safety officer, and, as such, will be looking at safe medication processes house-wide.
Helping the medication safety officers address medication safety is a Pharmacy committee that looks at “near misses” to see how an error almost occurred so that any problems in the process can be fixed. Peminic event reporting also is instrumental in identifying and resolving issues related to medication safety.
Staff play a major role in helping Terry and Salverson improve medication safety and achieve the goal of “right drug, right dose, right time and right route.” “Our process improvement is only as good as the information we receive,” Terry said.
Terry and Salverson welcome input from staff and may be contacted at 655-3390 and 655-2719 respectively.