World Patient Safety Day, 17th September 2022

2022-09-16 16:10

Medication Without Harm

The 17th of September is dedicated to Patient Safety as we celebrate World Patient Safety Day. Working as Patient Safety Specialists in a client company, we keep the patient at the center of everything we do. At the Patient Safety Unit, our activities are seamless between Patient Safety and Medical Information.

Patient Safety includes the safety of the treatment, devices, and pharmacotherapy, of which the latter consists of drug safety and medication safety. The theme for this year’s World Patient Safety Day is medication safety. Medication errors are the leading cause of avoidable harm in healthcare across the world. A lot can go wrong during the medication process – while prescribing, transcribing, storing, dispensing, administrating, or monitoring the treatment – and the majority of this is preventable with appropriate precautions.

What are we doing towards safe medications?

Our tasks at the client’s premises include both pharmacovigilance and medical information activities. This enables us to understand the importance of patient safety when delivering medical information responses – a match of job descriptions made in heaven, we’d say. Having a background in pharmacy and toxicology, we are happy to provide healthcare professionals, patients, and their loved ones medical information of high quality to prevent medication errors – to ensure ‘Medication Without Harm’.

We have been there throughout the journey: We have been the patient getting their (new) medications as well as the pharmacists advising the patient on how to take their medicine. Now as specialists in a medical information service we can utilize this experience to support all whom may have questions regarding our client’s products.

Know. Check. Ask

Communicating in an understandable way with up-to-date knowledge on medicinal products is not only beneficial to the treating physicians but, most importantly, to the patient. The World Health Organization is encouraging everyone involved in a patient’s medication process to ‘Know. Check. Ask’:

  • Know the medication prescribed to the patient,
  • check the information – patient, medicine, route, dose, and time -, and
  • ask if you are unsure.

Medical information is there not only for healthcare professionals, such as physicians, nurses, and pharmacists, but to the patients themselves to provide accurate and customized medical information responses in all concerns regarding medication.

As said, everyone has a role to play in medication safety.


This article is written by Henna Kilpeläinen and Veera Leino who work at the Patient Safety Unit of our client company.

We at Biocodex PhaMe offer pharmacovigilance and medical information services to meet your company’s needs. Contact us for more information.