The Center for Medication Safety has four main goals:
We will increase drug safety competency and decrease medication errors through enhanced training of healthcare professionals and better understanding for the public.
| Education:||We will reach out to the public, especially at-risk populations such as children and the elderly, through visits to community centers, senior citizens centers, daycare centers and other sites, to provide programs and informational materials that will help the public understand the importance of correct dosage, safe drug use, and the risks of borrowing medications.|
| Identification:||We will identify, through advanced research, the adverse drug effects (ADEs) that occur through the use of prescription and non-prescription drugs, and the morbidity, mortality, and costs associated with ADEs. This will enable us to build a knowledge base that will improve and increase drug effectiveness for patients. As well, we will identify the financial impact to the patient and the healthcare system that stems from ADEs in order to reinforce the need to understand their consequences and improve drug safety.|
| Explanation:||We will explain and predict how and why adverse drug effects occur and why certain populations or individuals respond to drugs the way they do.|
Reaching these goals will allow us to fulfill our mission to improve the health and safety of our patients through better understanding of how and why adverse drug effects (ADEs) occur, how to prevent those occurrences and their associated financial costs, and how to improve drug safety and effectiveness, especially for children and the elderly.