How does inventory management relate to medication safety and waste reduction, and what strategies support it?

• A. Increases waste and risk.
• B. Keeps stock at minimum to reduce cost.
• C. Reduces risk of expired meds and stockouts; use FEFO, regular cycling, perpetual inventory, and automated alerts.
• D. Inventory management is irrelevant to safety.

Answer: (C)

Effective inventory management supports medication safety and waste reduction by ensuring the right medications are available when needed while minimizing waste from expired products. The best approach uses FEFO (first-expired, first-out) so items closest to expiration are dispensed first, regular cycling to rotate stock and review expirations, perpetual inventory to track stock in real time, and automated alerts to flag items nearing expiration, low stock, or recalls. Together these strategies reduce the risk of administering expired meds and prevent stockouts, while cutting waste from expired or unused inventory. Options that imply more waste, only minimizing stock to cut costs without considering safety, or deem inventory irrelevant miss the safeguards and needs of safe, efficient medication use.