[Safe administration of medicines: learning from our mistakes]

This issue of the Dutch Journal of Medicine (NTvG) features a review article by Van der Veen et al. on safe administration of medicines in hospitals. This topic is part of an increased focus on patient safety that started at the beginning of the 21st century, following publication of the renowned report 'To err is human'. Now, almost 20 years later, we are a little disappointed that there is still no set of interventions that can be implemented to guarantee safe administration of medicines in hospitals. Why ever not? In this commentary we discuss the main limitations of the interventions that have been studied, but also describe what we think can already be implemented without further research.