FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT November 4, 2021 Renee Brehio, ISMP Public and Media Relations rbrehio@ismp.org • 614-376-0212 ISMP Announces 24th Annual Cheers Award Recipients Horsham, Pa. –The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) is proud to announce its 24th Annual Cheers Awards winners. The awards ceremony will be held as a virtual event on Tuesday, December 7, 2021. The ISMP Cheers Awards honor individuals, organizations, and companies that have set a standard of excellence for others to follow in the prevention of medication errors and adverse drug events; for more information, visit: https://www.ismp.org/cheers-awards. The winners of this year’s awards are:  City of Hope Protocol Content Administrators Duarte, CA The City of Hope Cancer Center’s Protocol Content Administrators (PCA) team is receiving a Cheers Award for their work in promoting safety and research integrity by ensuring the accuracy of all elements pertaining to investigational treatment plans. The City of Hope Cancer Center typically has more than 700 clinical trials open at a time. The team conducts a comprehensive review of every clinical trial protocol, lab manual, and pharmacy manual for discrepancies that could lead to medication errors. They also review and customize each patient’s treatment plan in the electronic medical record to help prevent errors and increase transparency, efficiency, and continuity of care. As of July 2021, the PCA team has made 493 clarifications, mostly in protocols, more than 20% of which have had a positive patient safety impact.  Inova Health System Fairfax, VA Inova Health System’s Intravenous (IV) Insulin Team: Push It, Push It Real Safe, is being recognized with a Cheers Award for their persistence in improving the safety of IV regular insulin administration. Inova’s pharmacy medication team has collaborated with other disciplines to implement error-reduction strategies, including restricting regular insulin to the IV route, requiring regular insulin prescribing via order sets with dosing limits, linking orders for IV push regular insulin to ensure dispensing of an appropriate needleless luer lock insulin syringe, and including an image of the appropriate syringe to be used for administration in the medication administration record. The team also has ensured that commercially available premixed regular insulin is being used for IV infusions. Many ISMP tools and guidelines have been utilized during the process, and over the last year there has been a significant reduction in severe hypoglycemic events.  KIDs List Collaborative Commissioned by the Pediatric Pharmacy Association (PPA) Authors: Rachel S. Meyers, PharmD; Jennifer Thackray, PharmD; Kelly L. Matson, PharmD; Christopher McPherson, PharmD; Lisa Lubsch, PharmD; Robert C. Hellinga, PharmD; and David S. Hoff, PharmD The KIDs List is being honored as the first available list of drugs that should be “avoided” or “used with caution” in pediatric patients. In 2017, PPA commissioned a team of pediatric pharmacists to compile a list A nonprofit organization 2 of drugs potentially inappropriate for use in pediatric patients, similar to the Beers Criteria used for the elderly population. The goal was to improve the safe use of medications in pediatric patients and inspire future research on medication safety in children. After three years of literature review and gathering expert opinions, the KIDs List was published in the March 2020 issue of the Journal of Pediatric Pharmacology and Therapeutics. The article is open access, making it free to use for the entire healthcare community. The KIDs List will be updated every five years, and the team intends to include other healthcare disciplines in the development and review of future versions.  The Medication Safety Minute St James’s Hospital, Dublin, Ireland The St James’s Hospital Medication Safety Minute team is receiving a Cheers Award for their innovative system of delivering weekly micro-learning sessions related to safe prescribing. The team developed a two-slide presentation for each “safety minute”—consisting of a question or a teaser and an answer—that hospital physicians with limited time can access at their convenience. From the start, the safety minutes have been made available to a wider audience. They are used by 24 additional hospitals in Ireland, shared with undergraduate and postgraduate students at local colleges in Ireland, and shared on social media with a dedicated