Convenience Should Never Create Patient-Safety Risk Community pharmacies move quickly. A staff member may be entering a prescription, updating insurance information, answering the phone, helping a patient at the counter, and switching between multiple tasks within minutes. Keeping several Kroll sessions or patient profiles open at the same time can seem convenient. But when workload, […]
September 17, 2026: A Global Reminder That Patient Safety Is an Everyday Responsibility Every prescription filled, medication reviewed, near miss identified, and patient counselled is an opportunity to make care safer. On September 17, 2026, World Patient Safety Day brings health professionals, patients, caregivers, organizations, and communities together around one shared goal: reducing avoidable harm […]
Building a Medication Safety Culture in Community Pharmacy Medication safety is often discussed in terms of processes. Double checks. Incident reports. Near misses. Policies. Procedures. Quality improvement meetings. All of these are important. But truly safe pharmacies go one step further. Safety becomes part of the pharmacy’s identity. It influences how team members communicate, how […]
How Does Your Pharmacy Compare? Every pharmacy strives to provide safe, high-quality patient care. But one question has always been difficult to answer: How does our pharmacy’s medication safety performance compare with others across the province? Until now, most pharmacies could only review their own incident reports and internal trends. While this information is valuable, […]
How Alberta Pharmacies Can Maintain an Active CQI+ Program Even When There Are No Reported Incidents For many Alberta pharmacies, one common question comes up after a quiet quarter: “If we had no medication incidents or close calls, do we still need to hold a CQI meeting?” The answer is yes. Under Alberta’s CQI+ framework, […]
AIMS Isn’t About More Paperwork, It’s About Better Practice With Ontario’s Assurance and Improvement in Medication Safety (AIMS) program launching on January 1, 2027, many pharmacies are beginning to think about incident reporting, documentation, and compliance. However, the most successful pharmacies won’t treat AIMS as a once-a-year requirement or another administrative task. Instead, they’ll make […]
Why Ontario Pharmacies Should Start Preparing for AIMS Now January 1, 2027 may seem far away, but successful implementation of Ontario’s Assurance and Improvement in Medication Safety (AIMS) program will require more than selecting a reporting platform. The pharmacies that gain the greatest value from AIMS will not be the ones that simply report incidents. […]
June 1 Is Almost Here. Are You Ready for CIRCL? With only days remaining before the June 1, 2026 CIRCL implementation deadline, many British Columbia pharmacies are working through the required checklist items: While completing these requirements is important, simply “checking the boxes” is unlikely to create the culture of continuous quality improvement that CIRCL […]
Introduction Community pharmacies operate in fast-paced, high-risk environments every day. Multiple prescriptions, workflow interruptions, staffing pressures, patient questions, insurance issues, and clinical decision-making all happen simultaneously. Despite this complexity, pharmacies are expected to consistently deliver safe and accurate care. This is where high-reliability principles become important. High-reliability organizations are systems that operate in complex environments […]
Introduction Medication errors rarely occur because of a single mistake. In most cases, they happen when multiple weaknesses in a system align at the same time. This concept is known as the Swiss Cheese Model, one of the most recognized patient safety frameworks in healthcare. As British Columbia pharmacies prepare for CIRCL (Continuous Improvement and […]
