What are Quality‑Related Events?

These are medication errors that have either reached the patient or was intercepted before reaching the patient. There are 13 types of errors that pharmacy employees may report. These range from a problem with the prescribed drug therapy to incorrect storage instructions.

When reporting a QRE, it is considered ‘harm’ if the error is not intercepted before it reaches the customer. If it is intercepted, it is still considered to be a quality related event but is not an ‘error’.

There are seven mandatory fields that the Pharmacist (or pharmacy employee) is responsible to complete when reporting a quality related event.

1. Date QRE occurred
2. Type of QRE
3. Who discovered the QRE (ex. Pharmacy tech, Patient, Dentist, etc.)
4. Medication system stage involved (ex. Administration, follow-up, etc.)
5. Medications (some QREs may not be medication related)
6. Degree of harm (ranges between ‘error did not reach the patient’ to ‘death’)
7. QRE Description

All QREs that were reported in Nova Scotia between 2007-2017 were collected and analyzed by the Safe Assured Research Team.

The most frequently reported QRE between 2007-2017 was incorrect dose of frequency (25.6%), followed by incorrect quantity (20%), and incorrect drug (14.2%). Of the events that reported patient harm (or is considered an error not an event), incorrect dose was also the most frequently reported (27.4%), followed by incorrect strength or concentration (20.2%) and incorrect drug (19.9%).

To read the full report, please read our paper "Quality Related Events Reported by Community Pharmacies in Nova Scotia: A 7-year Descriptive Analysis"