News Flash: A.S.P.E.N. Collaborates with the Institute for Safe Medication Practices

A.S.P.E.N. is excited to announce a collaborative project with the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) to educate clinicians on reporting nutrition support therapy errors.

This project, the first of its kind in the United States, aims to educate nutrition support therapy professionals on how and why they should report Parenteral Nutrition (PN) and Enteral Nutrition (EN) medical errors through the ISMP Medication Errors Reporting Program (MERP).

While not traditionally thought of as medications, EN and PN are therapies that are prescribed, dispensed, administered, and monitored similar to medications. Administration also involves infusion devices that may be used in error. Errors range from "hazardous conditions" (situations that may lead to an error), "close call" type errors that do not reach the patient (e.g., PN bag made incorrectly but never hung), to errors that cause patient harm (EN formulation delivered into an IV line).

The goals of A.S.P.E.N.'s new project are to:

* Educate healthcare professionals about nutrition support therapy error reporting (what events to report, what information to include and how to report them).

* Partner with ISMP in gathering data from clinicians on nutrition support therapy and device errors and share information with our constituents.

* Develop educational strategies to reduce errors.

* Collaborate on national initiatives that address error reduction for nutrition support therapies.

After submitting an error report, ISMP can then use this information to share with all healthcare practitioners along with members of A.S.P.E.N. so that they can learn about the types of errors, the reasons why the event took place and possible recommendations to prevent similar events from taking place in their organizations. A.S.P.E.N. and ISMP will analyze these errors and jointly publish error report findings.

Confidentiality is guaranteed for those reporting EN and PN errors, individuals involved in errors, location of events, and patient identity. The information collected during investigation of an error, for the purposes of safety and quality, is protected from legal discovery. ISMP is certified as a Patient Safety Organization (PSO) by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Because reporting to a PSO confers both privilege and confidentiality to the information reported, ISMP's PSO status will afford an even higher level of protection when clinicians and organizations report errors or engage in other types of consulting services with the Institute.