Clinical decision support for drug related events: Moving towards better prevention

Table 1 Definitions of drug related events

Term	Definition
Medication error[2]	“Any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is in the control of the health care professional, patient or consumer. This may include errors in prescribing, distribution, administration and monitoring”
Adverse drug reaction[3]	“Any undesired, unexpected, or unintended outcome associated with drug use“
Drug-related hazardous condition[3,4]	“Is the antecedent to injury or the temporal gap between the identification of an adverse drug reaction and the drug induced injury”. It occurs in the presence or absence of a medication error
ADE[5]	“Injury associated with the use of a drug”
Preventable ADEs[6]	“Injury associated with a medication error”
Potential ADEs[5]	“Medication errors with the potential to cause harm, but harm does not actually occur. Potential ADEs can be further described as intercepted and non-intercepted”
Trigger[6]	“Signals or clues used to identify adverse events”

ADE: Adverse drug event.