Tall man lettering application in medication information systems as a quality and safety strategy in hospital organization.

What Is Known And Objective: The technique of highlighted capital letters, Tall Man lettering, is a tool that allows differentiating the names of similar drugs in a way that contributes to reduce medication errors related to the drug identification. The objective was to implement and monitor the application protocol of the Tall Man lettering tool in drug information systems in the healthcare environment to improve the quality of care and patient safety in the pharmacy service and the medical institution.

Methods: Scope: Tertiary general hospital with 1000 beds in which a Tall Man lettering application protocol was approved in the pharmacy service information systems.

Applicability of the STOPP/START criteria to older polypathological patients in a long-term care hospital.

Objectives: To analyse the applicability of the STOPP/START criteria as a tool to identify patients with potentially inappropriate medications (PIM) during pharmaceutical validation of prescriptions in a long-term care hospital, to identify risk factors for PIM and to characterise the physiological systems and drugs more frequently associated with these PIM.

Methods: An interventional, prospective and longitudinal study was conducted in polypathological patients aged >65 years. Usual pharmaceutical care and the STOPP/START criteria were used to identify PIM and to plan pharmaceutical interventions at admission.