Today's Featured Research
A 2026 commentary published in the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association examines an important challenge facing U.S. community pharmacies: how can medication safety be improved when pharmacists and pharmacy technicians are working under increasing operational pressure?
Drawing on national pharmacy patient safety culture surveys, the authors highlight persistent concerns related to staffing, work pressure, and the pace of pharmacy operations. They also examine medication safety initiatives in Ontario, Canada, and California to explore how community pharmacies can build stronger systems for preventing and learning from dispensing errors.
The central message is clear: Improving medication safety requires more than asking pharmacy professionals to be more careful. It requires an environment designed to support safe practice.
When Being Careful Is No Longer Enough
Every pharmacist understands the importance of accuracy. Yet community pharmacy teams must manage a constant flow of responsibilities: reviewing prescriptions, counting medications, filling vials, verifying prescriptions, counseling patients, answering phone calls, and resolving insurance issues. These activities frequently overlap, particularly during peak dispensing hours.
When an error occurs, it may be tempting to attribute it to an individual’s lack of attention. However, this approach overlooks an important question: Was the workflow itself designed to minimize the likelihood of human error?
The commentary by Maldonado and colleagues suggests that staffing, work pressure, and operational pace are important factors to consider when examining medication safety culture. Even highly experienced pharmacy professionals work within the limitations of the systems around them.
The Medication Errors That Never Reach Patients
One of the concerns highlighted in the paper is the difference between documenting errors that reach patients and reporting near misses. A near miss occurs when an error is identified before it reaches the patient.
For example, a pharmacist might discover that the wrong medication was selected during the final verification process. The error is corrected, and the patient receives the appropriate medication. From the patient’s perspective, no harm occurred. But from a medication safety perspective, an important opportunity may have been missed.
Why was the wrong medication selected? Was it related to similar packaging, interruptions, workflow design, or excessive workload? Without systematically documenting and reviewing near misses, pharmacies may struggle to identify recurring risks and prevent future incidents.
The authors emphasize that effective medication safety programs should support continuous learning, not simply record errors after they occur.
Creating a Safer Pharmacy Starts with Workflow Design
Medication safety is not solely the responsibility of the individual pharmacist. It also depends on how pharmacy operations are organized.
Some responsibilities, such as clinical prescription review, evaluating drug interactions, and patient counseling, require professional judgment. Other activities, including tablet counting and certain vial-filling tasks, are repetitive and may be suitable for automation. This distinction creates an important opportunity.
By reconsidering how repetitive dispensing activities are performed, pharmacies may be able to reduce manual workload and create additional capacity for pharmacists and technicians to focus on activities that require their expertise.
Automation is not a replacement for pharmacist oversight. Automated systems still require appropriate medication loading, quality controls, exception handling, maintenance, and verification. However, when implemented as part of a carefully designed workflow, automation may help pharmacies use their available resources more effectively.
A Question Every Pharmacy Should Ask
Before asking staff to work faster or be more careful, pharmacy leaders should consider a different question: How much of our team’s time is spent performing repetitive tasks that could be standardized or automated?
Understanding where time is spent throughout the dispensing process can reveal opportunities to improve workflows without compromising professional oversight. Ultimately, the goal is not simply to fill more prescriptions. It is to create a pharmacy environment in which pharmacists and technicians have the resources, time, and support needed to deliver safe, high-quality patient care.
Could Vial-Filling Automation Help Your Pharmacy?
What would your pharmacy team do with more time for prescription review, patient counseling, and other high-value activities?
Explore how vial-filling automation could help reduce repetitive dispensing work and support a more efficient pharmacy workflow.
Reference
Maldonado R, Unni E, Senhaji-Tomza B. Strengthening medication safety infrastructure in U.S. community pharmacies: lessons from national survey data, Ontario AIMS, and California policy. Journal of the American Pharmacists Association. Published online September 20, 2026. Article 103526. doi:10.1016/j.japh.2026.103526.
