Medical Toxicology and Pharmacovigilance in Patient Safety Review

Patient safety depends on detecting, analyzing, and preventing harmful drug and chemical exposures across clinical settings. Pharmacovigilance—the science of observing and evaluating adverse events after medication use—operates through systematic reporting, signal detection, and risk quantification. This note examines how toxicological principles inform pharmacovigilance frameworks: dose-response relationships, individual susceptibility, drug-drug interactions, and route of exposure. We review WHO adverse event reporting standards and the role of clinical judgment in distinguishing expected side effects from true harms. The intersection of toxicology and pharmacovigilance shapes how health systems identify risks, communicate them to providers, and adjust clinical practice.