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Tips to comply with JCAHO’s look-alike/sound-alike list

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, December 22, 2006

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The JCAHO recently released an updated list of look-alike/sound-alike (LASA) medications that hospitals can use to comply with National Patient Safety Goal #3c (medication safety).

The list, which was updated in August, is comprised of medication name pairs that could be confused by caregivers, and includes a table for hospitals and other settings.

Following are some tips to help you comply with this goal, compiled from HCPro products and the U.S. Pharmocopeia's (USP) Web site (www.usp.org):

• Use colored bins on the pharmacy shelves to denote look-alike and sound-alike drugs. Then staff do not have to separate the medications and place them in separate areas of the pharmacy, helping workflow in the process.
• Use current data and resources to create posters that you can hang throughout your organization to remind staff about the potential for confusion. For example, the USP publishes a list of more than 750 pairs of drugs with similar looking or sounding names.
• Hang posters and charts with the look-alike and sound-alike drug pairs in the pharmacy and each medication room.

To get more requirements, go to Briefings on JCAHO (BOJ). For the cost of just three stories, you can get the entire December issue of BOJ. Click here to choose between the PDF and HTML versions for just $30. Subscribers to the online version of BOJ have free access to this article. Subscribers to the print newsletter can find this article in their December issue.

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