Impact: CMIRPS

Program Overview
Melissa Sheldrick’s Story
Evaluation Report

CMIRPS Program Overview

The Canadian Medication Incident Reporting and Prevention System (CMIRPS) is a collaborative pan-Canadian program of Health Canada, ISMP Canada, Canadian Institute for Health Information, Patients for Patient Safety Canada and Healthcare Excellence Canada. The goal of CMIRPS is to reduce and prevent harmful medication incidents in Canada.

CMIRPS Program Overview

Melissa Sheldrick’s Story

Melissa Sheldrick is the first Patient and Family Advisor on the ISMP Canada team. She has been a strong advocate of patient safety and medication safety after the loss of her son, Andrew Sheldrick, to an error made during the dispensing of his compounded medication. Since then, she has worked nationally and internationally to call for action and improvement in medication safety. Since 2019, Melissa has been bringing her lived experience to ISMP Canada.

Read more about her role and watch the video that tells her story.

Melissa Sheldrick, Patient and Family Advisor

After discovering that the sudden passing of her son, Andrew, was due to medication errors, Melissa set out to ensure that this would not happen to another family. She advocated across Canada, speaking to regulators, students, health care organizations and members of government to implement continuous quality improvement programs for community pharmacies, including mandatory anonymous error reporting. Watch Melissa’s story and hear her call for collaboration between patients and families, and health care providers.

In 2019, Melissa left her teaching career and began working with ISMP Canada in the inaugural position of Patient and Family Advisor. As part of the Leadership team, her unique perspective brings the voice of the consumer to every project, product and collaboration. One of Melissa’s main roles is to engage with patients and families individually and through networks. Examples of this work include connecting with patients and families after an error has occurred, safemedicationuse.ca newsletter development and bringing the learn, share, act cycle to the consumer side of the organization. Although Melissa’s main focus is CMIRPS related work, she has also been the faculty lead in the Strengthening Medication Safety in Ontario Long-Term Care initiative focusing on resident and family engagement.

Video created by Patient Safety Movement Foundation.

CMIRPS Evaluation Report

Prairie Research Associates (PRA), an independent research firm, conducted an evaluation in 2022 of the relevance, usefulness, and effectiveness of the CMIRPS products/services offered by ISMP Canada. PRA determined that there is vast evidence of ISMP Canada activities positively impacting the Canadian health system. ISMP Canada CMIRPS resources, activities, and products have been integrated into and referenced in several national and provincial standard and required practice, guideline and best practice, product improvement, and policy and procedure documents and committees over the past 10 years. Additionally, the opioid stewardship case scenario completed as part of this evaluation showed direct impact of an ISMP Canada safety bulletin on patients. Finally, ISMP Canada is also impacting the Canadian health system by transferring knowledge to medical researchers through journal publications they have co-authored or been referenced in. See the Executive Summary of the evaluation report for more information.

CMIRPS Evaluation Report