Design for patient safety: a guide to the design of dispensed medicines

This booklet explores how design can be used to make dispensed products safer for patients, whether they are dispensed from community pharmacies, doctor dispensing practices or hospital pharmacies.

Organisations, managers and healthcare workers involved in dispensing medicines should use this booklet as a resource to help introduce new initiatives to minimise harm from medicines.

It looks at some key elements of dispensed medicines, including:

• setting up a label, including label size, font, layout and paper quality;
• applying dispensing labels to medicines; and
• auxiliary aids to help patients use medicines.

New factors that will impact on the dispensing process include electronic prescription services; auto-id and automation technologies; more responsibilities for pharmacy technicians; and enhanced pharmacy services. We have tried to take account of these in the guide.