Institute for Healthcare Improvement: Trigger Tool for Measuring ADEs

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The Trigger Tool for Measuring Adverse Drug Events (ADEs) provides an easy-to-use method for accurately identifying adverse drug events — harm from medications — and measuring the rate of ADEs over time. Tracking ADEs over time is a useful way to tell if changes a team is making are improving the safety of the medication system. Hundreds of hospitals have used the Trigger Tool to identify ADEs, to measure the level of harm from each ADE, and to identify areas for improvement in their organizations. The interactive Trigger Tool makes using this method of identifying and tracking ADEs even easier and more accurate.

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OSF St. Joseph Medical Center
Bloomington, Illinois, USA

The team at OSF St. Joseph Medical Center is using the Trigger Tool for Measuring Adverse Drug Events.

Percent of Admissions with an ADE

Adverse Drug Events (ADEs) per 1,000 Doses

See some great results this team is achieving!

You can use the Trigger Tool for Measuring Adverse Drug Events (ADEs) to conduct a retrospective review of patients records using triggers to identify possible ADEs. This tool includes a list of known ADE triggers — clues that an ADE may have occurred — and instructions for measuring the number and degree of harmful medication events.

Here are the basic steps for using the interactive Trigger Tool (the downloadable Trigger Tool on the Use Trigger Tool ADEs page provides complete instructions):

1.	Download the instructions and data collection forms. With your team, review the list of ADE triggers. You may choose to add some triggers to the list and delete others.
2.	Recruit a multidisciplinary team to view a sample of patient records. Review each patient record, recording all triggers found. For each trigger found, examine the patient record to determine if an ADE has occurred. Using the Patient Record Review Sheet, assign a level of harm for each ADE found and provide a brief description.
3.	Enter your detailed data from all of the Patient Record Review Sheets into the interactive Trigger Tool for Measuring Adverse Drug Events. The Tool will automatically calculate and graph two measures: ADEs per 1,000 Doses and Percent of Admissions with an ADE.

Use the Trigger Tool for Measuring Adverse Drug Events (ADEs)