AORN Guidance Statement: Safe Medication Practices in Perioperative Settings Across the Life Span

This guidance statement provides a framework for perioperative registered nurses to develop, implement, and evaluate safe medication management practices specific to the perioperative setting. This evidenced-based framework may be used to facilitate policy development and provide a foundation for the creation of quality improvement (QI)/process improvement (PI) monitors. It is the responsibility of individual health care organizations to develop a culture of medication safety. Proactively reviewing medication errors from the viewpoint of “systems failures” and “systems solutions” will help encourage a culture free from shame and blame. Perioperative practice settings addressed by this document include traditional operating rooms, ambulatory surgery units, physicians’ offices, cardiac catheterization suites, endoscopy suites, radiology departments, and all other areas where operative and invasive procedures may be performed. For the purpose of this document, the term OR is inclusive of all perioperative practice environments. First published in May 2002, the current guidance statement has been reviewed and updated by AORN’s Presidential Commission on Patient Safety, in collaboration with the United States Pharmacopeia (USP), to reflect current safe medication practices.