Investigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the occurrence of medication incidents in Canadian community pharmacies

Abstract

As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, community pharmacies adapted rapidly to broaden and adjust the services they were providing to patients, while coping with severe pressure on supply chains and constrained social interactions. This study investigates whether these events had an impact on the medication incidents reported by pharmacists. Results indicate that Canadian pharmacies were able to sustain such stress while maintaining comparable safety levels. At the same time, it appears that some risk factors that were either ignored or not meaningful in the past started to be reported, suggesting that community pharmacists are now aware of a larger set of contributing factors that can lead to medication incidents, notably for medication incidents that can lead to harm.

Keywords

• Community pharmacies
• Medication incidents
• Pandemic
• Risk factors
• COVID-19