Background: Stress among pharmacy students could greatly affect their learning activities and general well-being. It is therefore necessary to investigate how stress relates with the quality of life of students to maintain and/or improve their personal satisfaction and academic performance. A school-based longitudinal study was used to investigate the relationship between stress and quality of life of undergraduate pharmacy students. The 10-item perceived stress scale and the shorter version of the WHO quality of life scale were administered to the same participants at two time points i.e. Time 1 (4 weeks into the semester) and Time 2 (8 weeks afterwards). The correlations and differences between the study variables were tested using the Pearson's coefficient and independent sample t test. Results:The mean stress scores were higher at Time 2 compared to Time 1 for the first and second years. However, there was no significant difference in stress for different year groups-Time 1 [F (3) = 0.410; p = 0.746] and Time 2 [F(3) = 0.909; p = 0.439]. Female students had higher stress scores at Time 2 compared to male students. The main stressors identified in the study were; large volume of material to be studied (88.2%), laboratory report writing (78.2%), constant pressure to maintain good grades (66.4%) and the lack of leisure time (46.4%). Even though most students employed positive stress management strategies such as time management (68.2%), other students resorted to emotional eating (9.1%) and alcohol/substance use (1.8%). At Time 2, perceived stress scores were significantly negatively correlated with social relationship (r = −0.40, p ≤ 0.0001), environmental health (r = −0.37, p ≤ 0.0001), physical health (r = −0.49, p ≤ 0.0001) and psychological health (r = −0.51, p ≤ 0.0001). Conclusion:The study reported significant correlations between stress and various domains of quality of life of undergraduate pharmacy students. It is thus necessary to institute some personal and institutional strategies to ameliorate the effect of stress on the quality of life of pharmacy students while encouraging the use of positive stress management strategies.

BACKGROUND: Medication safety is an essential component of patient safety in health care delivery. Providing strategies to effectively prevent medication errors and adverse drug events in hospitals has gained international recognition. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this paper was to review systematically the research literature on the various interventions for providing medication safety in hospitals. METHOD: Eight healthcare databases were searched for full research articles written in English. Reference lists of included studies were also searched. Research studies involving delivery of interventions in hospitals with the aim of preventing or reducing medication errors and adverse drug events were examined. RESULTS: Forty-two studies were selected. Most of the studies were before and after designs without comparative control groups. Forty studies identified interventions contributing to the prevention and reduction of medication errors. Six broad types of interventions were identified: computerized physician order entry with or without clinical decision support systems, automation, computer assisted, barcode technology, pharmacist role, training and system designs. CONCLUSION: Though studies have provided evidence for individual interventions, there are concerns about the extent of their effectiveness. This has implications for policy makers and clinicians to adopt multifaceted approach in providing medication safety in their hospitals.

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This study gives credence to similar studies in different settings that MAEs occur frequently in the ED of hospitals. Most of the errors identified were not potentially fatal; however, preventive strategies need to be used to make life-saving processes such as drug administration in such specialized units error-free.

Background: Errors occur frequently in the use of medicines. Pharmacists play a key role in error identification and make appropriate interventions as they work with other healthcare professionals. These error recovery roles of pharmacists contribute to patient safety. This study was to evaluate the clinical interventions made to drug-related problems at a tertiary care setting. Method: This involved a retrospective review of clinical intervention reports submitted by pharmacists working over the period January 2011 to December 2013. Results: The 24 pharmacists submitted 529 handwritten reports; of these, 448 reports had complete data. The most frequently reported drugs with error were warfarin (9.5%), potassium chloride (6.0%) and potassium citrate (5.5%). The pharmacists made 1019 clinical interventions and recommendations. The average intervention per report was 2.5 (S.D ± 0.67). The interventions and recommendations made were categorised as drug regimen change (76.1%), monitoring required (13.0%), communication (5.4%), counselling required (5.0%) and adverse drug reporting (0.6%). Majority (90.5%) of the recommendations and interventions made by pharmacists were accepted and implemented. Monitoring-required based interventions were significantly more likely to be accepted (130 vs 38; p <0.0001). Conclusion: Pharmacists played a role in drug error recovery and prevented medication errors from reaching patients. These error mitigation efforts of pharmacists can serve as a priority in patient safety strategy.