Overview

CQI+ focuses on enhancing the safety and quality of pharmacy care in Alberta by enabling pharmacy teams to be proactive when it comes to patient safety, facilitating broader learning and sharing when practice incidents or close calls do occur, and strengthening the safety culture of pharmacy in Alberta.

Central to CQI+ will be the use of technology to enhance pharmacy teams’ abilities to record and analyze practice incidents and close calls, and anonymously share those details to a national database: the National Incident Data Repository for Community Pharmacies (NIDR). In turn, pharmacy teams and patients will benefit when proactive safety strategies can be implemented based on the insights gained from collective experiences across Canada.

CQI+ consists of five key activities:

• Prevent,
• Respond,
• Analyze,
• Improve, and
• Communicate.

At its core, each key activity is enabled by a strong safety culture – a genuine commitment to patient safety by the entire pharmacy team.

• Prevent – Action will be taken by pharmacy teams to minimize risks to patients before a practice incident or close call occurs.
• Respond – Pharmacy teams will respond appropriately and in a timely fashion when practice incidents or close calls occur to meet the needs of patients.
• Analyze – Pharmacy teams will identify contributing factors and root causes when practice incidents and close calls occur.
• Improve – Pharmacy teams will take steps to improve the safety of their practices based on their analysis of practice incidents and close calls.
• Communicate – Essential to the success of all activities within CQI+ is comprehensive, open communication with patients, caregivers, other healthcare providers, and within the pharmacy team. This will ensure everyone can learn from concerns that are identified, and that patients are appropriately informed and engaged in addressing risks.