Professional, structural and organisational interventions in primary care for reducing medication errors

Based on moderate‐ and low‐certainty evidence, interventions in primary care for reducing preventable medication errors probably make little or no difference to the number of people admitted to hospital or the number of hospitalizations, emergency department visits, or mortality. No structural interventions were identified and only four studies used professional interventions, and so more work needs to be done with these types of interventions. There is a need for high‐quality studies describing the interventions in more detail and testing patient‐related outcomes. Professional interventions included the use of health information technology to identify people at risk of medication problems, computer‐ generated care suggested and actioned by a physician, electronic notification systems about dose changes, drug interventions and follow‐up, and educational interventions on drug use aimed at physicians to improve drug prescriptions. Organizational interventions included medication reviews by pharmacists, nurses or physicians, clinician‐led clinics, and home visits by clinicians.