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Ever wonder what happens to the information about practice incidents and close calls you document into your pharmacy’s online practice incident management platform as part of CQI+? The information is anonymously submitted into the National Incident Data Repository (NIDR) for Community Pharmacies. The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) Canada analyzes this data and shares its analyses in various ways so that pharmacy teams across Canada can be aware of trends in practice incidents and close calls and learn how to prevent them.
ISMP Canada has recently published two resources that share valuable information for pharmacy teams.
NIDR National Snapshot
The NIDR National Snapshot is an annual publication that presents overall practice incident and close call data from across Canada. This report includes data collected in 2025, before Alberta started participating in the program. Still, there are some valuable insights for Alberta pharmacy teams that can inform safety improvements. Alberta pharmacy teams are now contributing to this national learning system. Your reports will help inform future national snapshots and other medication safety resources.
NIDR Repository Safety Brief for Alberta
This brief specific to Alberta is published twice per year. The reporting period for this edition was October 1, 2025, to March 31, 2026. As reporting practice incidents and close calls became mandatory in Alberta on February 1, 2026, this publication represents two months worth of data. The Safety Brief includes the top five types of incidents that were reported by Alberta pharmacies and the degree of harm the reported incidents had on patients.
The Safety Brief also shares safety tips that emerge from trends in the reporting. This issue focuses on recurring reports involving multiple prescription entries in the dispensing software to complete a treatment regimen (e.g., multiple strengths of a single medication or multiple medications for complementary effect).
To help reduce the risk of these incidents, tips from the Safety Brief include the following:
- When using the “copy” function for prescriptions involving multiple strengths, review the full patient profile to ensure that no new prescriptions were missed and no previous prescriptions remain active.
- Consult the original prescription during the final check to confirm that all medications or strengths intended to be used together have been entered and dispensed.
In both resources, close calls represent almost half of the reporting by pharmacy teams. Also, practice incidents that did not lead to patient harm represent a significant amount of the total reports. This is a good reminder that reporting should not be limited to practice incidents that lead to patient harm—all practice incidents and close calls present opportunities for learning and should be documented in the practice incident management platform.
ACP encourages regulated members to review the above resources and share with your colleagues for awareness and learning. Consider discussing the findings during your next continuous quality improvement (CQI) meeting and identifying any recommendations that could strengthen safety in your team’s practice. Also, remember that your diligent documentation of close calls and practice incidents contributes to stronger resources made available to pharmacy teams across Canada.
