Medication safety improvements during care transitions in an Australian intensive care unit following implementation of an electronic medication management system.

Background: For patients requiring admission to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), transfers of care (TOC) during admission to and discharge from the ICU are particularly high-risk periods for medication errors. In the Australian setting, commonly general wards and the ICU do not share an integrated Electronic Medical ecord (EMR) and specifically an Electronic Medication Management System (EMMS) as part of the EMR.

Purpose: To evaluate the effect of a hospital wide integrated EMMS on medication error rates during ICU admission and at TOC.