Browsing by Subject "definition"

Safety of pharmacotherapies is an essential part of patient safety that promotes and supports rational use of medicines. Safety of pharmacotherapies can be divided into two areas; Drug safety and medication safety. Drug safety refers to the safety of a medicine as a product, such as the pharmacological properties and the quality of the manufacturing process. Medication safety ensures the safety of a drug therapy process preventing patients from harm during the course of using medicines. Significant inconsistencies have been identified in the terminology related to drug and medication safety. Challenges to terminology are posed by varying synonyms, ambiguity or overlap of concepts, and misclassification of events in the scientific literature. The primary objective of this study was to scope recent peer-reviewed literature related to the drug safety and medication safety terminology from the period pf 2010-2022. A secondary objective was to examine the relationship between the concepts as presented in the literature, including overlaps and differences between the terms. The study was conducted as a scoping review by using Scopus and Ovid Medline databases. The literature search covered studies from January 2010 to January 2022. The search was conducted by using the following phrases; "("medication safety" OR "drug safety" OR pharmacovigilance) W/5 (definition* OR terminology*)" in Scopus and "("medication safety" OR "drug safety" OR pharmacovigilance) ADJ/6 (definition* OR terminology*)" in Ovid Medline. The references of the included articles were reviewed for any additional material. The relevant material was selected by two researchers. A total of 71 articles were identified from the databases, of which two articles met the predefined inclusion criteria. In addition, one article was included in the study from outside the actual search. Two of the included articles were based on drug safety terminology whereas one article was based on medication safety terminology. The results revealed that there is still a considerable heterogeneity of the terms in the literature. The literature shows several terms and definitions for the same phenomenon and no noticeable consistency in the terms. It would be important to define what a uniform and systematically used terminology would require and to establish a commonly accepted guidelines for its use.