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Pharmapod Event Management 1 - Reporting an event

Written by Eogan McCullen
Updated over 3 weeks ago

Intended Audience/User Role:

Staff identifying and reporting events

Staff responsible for Case Management and Continuous Quality Improvement

Region:

All Regions

Updated Date:

February 2026

From the Dashboard, users can report medication safety events by selecting the appropriate form. Different organizations will have different forms enabled, and each form may have different questions and configurations based on the organization’s needs.

A: Event reporting options

  1. Artificial Intelligence (AI) Form assistant is a feature that uses AI to speed up the process of submitting event reports. Organizations can choose to deactivate it.

  2. “Incidents” are defined as medication safety events wherein the product has reached the patient (see “Pharmapod Glossary”). It does not require the patient to have administered or ingested a dose, the incorrect product left the facility or otherwise came into the patient’s possession or the correct product was not provided to the patient.

  3. “Good catches” are defined as medication safety events wherein the product has not reached the patient, and the error was caught by the facility staff.

B: Additional Dashboard functionalities explained in section “Dashboard: Tracking and Searching Events.”

Opening a Medication Incident

When the user clicks on one of the available form options, that form will be displayed.

Completing a Pharmacy Medication Incident

A: Progress tracker indicates form steps

  1. Event form type (e.g. Pharmacy Medication Incident) of Central Fill pharmacy

  2. Facility for which the form is being completed

  3. Toggle to hide non-required fields

  4. Form progress tracker indicating step status:

    1. Current form step (green background)

    2. Upcoming form steps (grey or black means not started)

    3. Pending form steps (orange means outstanding mandatory fields)

    4. Done form step (complete and green)

  5. Steps that show/hide based on user selections in the form

B: Form fields/selections e.g. Event Description

  1. “Describe the facts of what happened” is the free text field for users to write an objective and comprehensive description of the event without any personal identifying information. Pharmapod recommends that this step be completed as soon as the event is identified, when the details are fresh e.g. dates/times, harm level, what happened, factors that contributed to the event. Once text is entered into the description field users can proceed to next steps and save the report as draft.

  2. “?” icon is an information tooltip that displays more information about the field when the user hovers their mouse over it

  3. Multi-select options allow for precise and easy form completion and useful data for analysis. Dynamic show/hide options based on form selections

  4. A red asterisk “*” indicates a mandatory field that must be completed in order for the form to be submitted. The red background appears to guide the user to outstanding mandatory questions requiring completion.

  5. View more/less function. When viewing more, the additional fields appear with a yellow highlighted background.

C: Form navigation buttons

  1. “Cancel”: Form submission is deleted, no draft or record of the draft will be preserved.

  2. Save as draft: allows the user to return to the form at a later time to continue working on it. Only becomes available when text is entered into the “Describe the facts of what happened” field in “Event Description”.

  3. Next/Previous: navigate to the next or the previous form step.

  4. Submit: Only becomes available when all mandatory fields in the form have been completed. “Submit” triggers any preprogrammed automated notifications or escalations (see “Pharmapod Glossary) to inform others in the organization. When the user clicks “Submit”, an event summary page will display, explained in “Pharmapod Event Management 3 - Event Summary Page”

Form steps explained

A: Progress tracker indicates form steps

  • Step 1. Event Description
    ​    See above.

  • Step 2. Patient Details
    This section can be customized to have as much or as little personal information as the organization chooses. For form customization please see “Form Settings (All Functionalities)” article in the help center.

  • Step 3. WHAT Happened (Event Category/Incident Type)
    In this section, the most direct issue(s) that did or could have caused harm to the patient is selected. This could be related to a medication, a prescription, a clinical step or a privacy issue. Multiple items can be involved.
    E.g. An antibiotic was an omission when a delivery was missed causing the infection to get worse OR the incorrect drug (vaccine) was almost administered to the incorrect person and in addition there was a privacy breach.

  • Step 4. Incident Details
    This section includes dates/times, the role of who reported the event, situations with risk or outcomes with risk

  • Step 5. Risk and Harm Details
    ​    WHO categories about harm caused, treatment required, potential harm and likelihood of recurrence

  • Step 6. Details of Medication/Device Involved
    This section includes information such as prescribed vs. dispensed product and prescriber

  • Step 7. Stages Involved (WHEN it happened)
    ​    This section includes all possible stages during the medication management system when the event could have occurred e.g. prescribing or delivery

  • Step 8. CQI tools
    Contributing factors and subfactors related to the event help to explain why the event occurred. Organizations can add more CQI fields and make them optional or mandatory per their organization. See “Form Settings (All Functionalities)” article in the help center.

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