Editorial [Hot topic: A Focus on Medication Safety in the Intensive Care Unit (Guest Editor: Gourang Patel)]

Medication safety is critical and complex area of improvement for health-care systems. The patient population of the intensive care unit (ICU) presents a unique challenge of constantly changing laboratory values, procedures, and medications. In a complex environment, several key factors play roles which are critical to the success of medication safety. One factor is the error analysis after an event has occurred. Encompassing a structured, consistent, and thorough approach to medication error analysis is vital to the summary of recommendations an error analysis can provide. In addition, the utilization of technology is equally important in the prevention of medication errors which can occur in the ICU setting. Several categories of pharmacotherapy present significant challenges in the ICU include the following: sedation/analgesia, hyperglycemia management, chemotherapy, and parenteral nutrition. The following six articles in this Hot Topic series titled “A Focus on Medication Safety” address these areas of focus and provide recommendations for utilizing these medications safely in clinical practice. Medication safety is a multidisciplinary approach to improve patient outcome in the ICU and the implementation of these medication safety principles and strategies are critical in impacting patient survival.