Medication Errors and Root Causes Analysis: Emerging Views and Practices in King Saud Medical City, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Background: Medication errors (MEs) are associated with significant morbidity and mortality, and huge cost worldwide. Medication errors are multifactorial and present in different forms with variable severity. Many tools are developed to analyze MEs for knowing the main etiological factor and preventing their occurrence.

Objective: This mini-review narratively describes the emerging views and practices concerning MEs and root cause analysis (RCA) in King Saud Medical City (KSMC) supported by relevant international literature.

Methods: Electronic searches of PubMed and Google Scholar using keywords were made to identify relevant articles published in English literature of the past 10 years. For illustrative purpose, three case scenarios of MEs with step-wise process of RCA were presented in this research.

Results: A number of programs, orientation sessions, policies and procedures, ME reporting system, guidelines and action plan were developed to identify and prevent MEs, and RCA of MEs was the most important assessment tool to recognize the main causes underlying MEs in KSMC.

Conclusion: Several programs, developed and implemented in KSMC over the past few years match with international evidence-based data, and RCA is an effective tool to detect, analyze and prevent MEs in this medical city. This mini-review calls for further research on MEs and root cause analysis in other hospitals of Saudi Arabia.