ISMP Announces 25th Annual Cheers Award Recipients

PLYMOUTH MEETING, PA—The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) is proud to announce its 25th Annual Cheers Awards winners. The awards ceremony for this landmark anniversary year will be held on Tuesday, December 6, 2022 at Stoney’s Rockin’ Country in Las Vegas, NV. The ISMP Cheers Awards honor individuals, organizations, and companies that have set a standard of excellence for others to follow in the prevention of medication errors and adverse drug events; for more information, visit: https://www.ismp.org/cheers-awards.

The winners of this year’s awards are:

• Sharp HealthCare
  San Diego, CA
  Sharp HealthCare’s Performance Improvement team is receiving a Cheers Award for developing innovative solutions to reduce the risk of patient harm when infusing non-cytotoxic vesicant/irritant medications via peripheral intravenous (IV) lines. The multidisciplinary team identified areas for improvement and developed guidelines to standardize processes and support safe administration. They also capitalized on the use of technology by building rules, enhancing IV site change documentation, and providing tools at the point of care to ensure staff awareness of appropriate interventions during administration. The team, which consists of pharmacists, physicians, nurses, information specialists, and vascular access specialists, was able to significantly reduce the number of extravasation events after just one year.

• Shifa International Hospital
  Islamabad, Pakistan
  Shifa International Hospital is being honored for implementing camera assisted verification for chemotherapy admixture services with limited resources. In order to follow ISMP’s Targeted Medication Safety Best Practices for Hospitals, the pharmacy services team wanted to ensure that the proper ingredients and amount of each were confirmed prior to being added to the final chemotherapy IV bag. The team put into place an affordable, workable solution that did not put additional financial strain on the hospital. With support from leadership, the project was funded for a total of approximately $915 US dollars. Shifa International Hospital’s successful initiative serves as an example of what healthcare organizations that cannot afford advanced technology such as gravimetric analysis equipment, barcode and robotic applications, and IV workflow software can accomplish to prevent errors.

The George DiDomizio Award was established in 2012 in memory of a late ISMP Board member who advocated for greater cooperation between the medical industry and the broader healthcare community to promote safer drug products. The award is being given this year to Vitalis, a pharmaceutical company based in Colombia, for its dedication to designing safer labels and packages for their medications, despite the fact that it is not mandatory at the regulatory level in Latin America. After recognizing potential safety issues with their injectable medications, Vitalis reached out to several organizations, including ISMP, for guidance. As a result, new labels were designed that include several strategies: color differentiation between products and strengths, white background to improve contrast, and more legible text with vertical orientation that can easily be read without having to turn the ampule. Dangerous abbreviations have been removed and tall man lettering is utilized where appropriate. These changes were also incorporated into labeling on the medication packaging and vials, and today these products are being distributed in several countries, including Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Panama, and Costa Rica.

The ISMP Lifetime Achievement Award is being presented to Michael R. Cohen, RPh, MS, ScD (hon.), DPS (hon.), FASHP, for his invaluable leadership and advocacy in the field of medication safety. Mike is the President Emeritus and co-founder of the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) and has dedicated his long career to advocating for medication error prevention. Mike’s passion for medication safety began in 1974 when he was alerted to a serious adverse event with insulin at a local hospital and immediately saw the value in sharing the story to prevent the same error from occurring again. He founded ISMP in 1994 and launched the first of the ISMP Medication Safety Alert!^® publications in 1996. Those newsletters now reach over a million health professionals in the US and over 30 foreign countries. Mike and his colleagues at ISMP have been instrumental in bringing about countless changes in clinical practice, public policy, and drug labeling and packaging that have impacted millions of patients and healthcare professionals. Mike is the co-founder and longtime Chairperson of the International Medication Safety Network (IMSN), and a former member of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee and Nonprescription Drugs Advisory Committee. He currently serves as co-chair of the Nomenclature and Labeling Expert Committee of the United States Pharmacopeia (USP). His many awards and honors include receiving the John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Award from the National Quality Forum and The Joint Commission and being recognized as a MacArthur Fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Mike will also be the keynote speaker for the 25th annual Cheers Awards.

Journalists who wish to attend the awards ceremony should contact Renee Brehio at rbrehio@ismp.org.

About the Institute for Safe Medication Practices
The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) is the nation’s first 501c (3) nonprofit organization devoted entirely to preventing medication errors. ISMP is known and respected for its medication safety information. For more than 25 years, it also has served as a vital force for progress. ISMP’s advocacy work alone has resulted in numerous necessary changes in clinical practice, public policy, and drug labeling and packaging. Among its many initiatives, ISMP runs the only national voluntary practitioner medication error reporting program, publishes newsletters with real-time error information read and trusted throughout the global healthcare community, and offers a wide range of unique educational programs, tools, and guidelines. In 2020, ISMP formally affiliated with ECRI to create one of the largest healthcare quality and safety entities in the world, and ECRI and the ISMP PSO is a federally certified patient safety organization by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. As an independent watchdog organization, ISMP receives no advertising revenue and depends entirely on charitable donations, educational grants, newsletter subscriptions, and volunteer efforts to pursue its life-saving work. Visit www.ismp.org and follow @ismp_org to learn more.

For more information, contact:
Renee Brehio, ISMP Public and Media Relations
614-376-0212
rbrehio@ismp.org