A Focused Review: Perioperative Safe Medication Use

To expand the perioperative team's knowledge about current safe medication practices, this article builds the knowledge base using definitions from a national taxonomy and a leading patient safety organization, presents findings from multiple sources that represent some of the known failure points that reflect the state of the science, and proposes and identifies solutions to address the failure points. It is hoped that this discussion allows perioperative clinicians to gain an appreciation of how the complex system within the perioperative environment predisposes otherwise competent practitioners to medication error involvement.