CVS Assessment Medication Safety and Error Prevention Questions and Answers Flashcards

What is the primary purpose of the 'five rights' of medication dispensing at CVS?

Answer: To ensure the right patient gets the right drug, dose, route, and time

The five rights—right patient, drug, dose, route, and time—are the foundation of safe medication dispensing.

A customer hands you a prescription and the drug name looks similar to another medication on the shelf. What should you do first?

Answer: Alert the pharmacist immediately before proceeding

Look-alike/sound-alike drugs are a leading source of dispensing errors, so the pharmacist must verify before any action.

Which practice best prevents a medication mix-up when filling multiple prescriptions at once?

Answer: Keep each patient's prescriptions physically separated at all times

Physical separation of each patient's prescription bag or workspace prevents cross-patient medication errors.

What should a CVS pharmacy technician do if they notice a potential drug-drug interaction while entering a prescription?

Answer: Flag it for the pharmacist to review before dispensing

Pharmacists are licensed to evaluate drug interactions; technicians must flag alerts and never override them without pharmacist review.

High-alert medications at CVS require extra verification steps primarily because:

Answer: Errors with these drugs are more likely to cause serious patient harm

High-alert medications such as anticoagulants and insulin have a narrow margin for error and can cause severe or fatal harm.

After filling a prescription, what is the best final safety check before handing medication to a patient?

Answer: Verify the label matches the original prescription in drug, strength, quantity, and patient name

A final label-to-prescription comparison catches data-entry errors before the medication reaches the patient.