Safe Medication Principles
Safe medication practices promote patient safety, enhance the results of medication use and reduce liability loss. To achieve these goals, the following principles are offered to assist physicians to form effective therapeutic partnerships with their patients. The global intent of these principles is to identify and address actions that have been shown by experience and numerous studies to be associated with the decreased risk of undesired effects.
In an effective therapeutic partnership, the physician’s contribution is to prescribe the appropriate medication and to educate the patient about its use. The patient’s contribution is to take medications according to instructions and to re p o rt back to the physician both the positive and negative effects. (Pharmacists and nurses also have an important role in the therapeutic partnership. The focus of these principles, however, is on the relationship between the knowledgeable physician and the informed patient.)
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