Characterizing medication safety incidents in surgical patients: a retrospective cross-sectional analysis of incident reports.

To the knowledge of the authors, this is the first study in the United Kingdom that reports the medications most frequently involved in MSI reports for surgical patients. Staff in the surgical setting should be informed of the high frequency of incidents involving opioids, antimicrobials, heparin, and other antithrombotic agents as they appear in half of MSI reports in the surgical setting. Further research should explore administration error reduction strategies as well as tools to improve communication between staff to mitigate the risk of medicines-related harm associated with key medications.