Barriers That Diminish Interaction Between Nurses And Pharmacist Technician

Working in health care handling prescription drugs is something that most nurses probably do not think twice about. That is until you are asked to decrease the frequency in which you are giving a medication. Though the prescription drug shortage is not something we may necessarily think about on a day to day basis, it is something that affects everyone in healthcare. The shortages affect what treatment options a patient may have or determining if there are other medications for substitution in the event the production of a drug is halted. Though we think

A growing demand has emerged in the healthcare field for well-trained pharmacy technicians to assist the pharmacist in many practice settings by assuming greater responsibilities. These may include order entry, filing prescription orders, compounding sterile preparations, cart fill exchanges, inventory control, operation of automated technology, utilizing the computer system as well as fulfilling other patient specific duties. Well-trained pharmacy technicians in retail and institutional settings are a vital part of the healthcare team.

When doctors prescribe medication for their patients, a local retail pharmacy is most likely to be utilized to fill the order. However, there is a growing population of older Americans that are no longer able to live independently and must reside in nursing homes or assisted living facilities. In order for this vulnerable population to receive their medications, a different kind of pharmacy is needed, these are known as LTC, long term care pharmacies. Within these specialized pharmacies there are highly trained employees called CPhTs, certified pharmacy technicians who are overseen by state licensed

During the two and a half years of my pharmacy journey, I have been thinking what can a pharmacist do within the healthcare interprofessional team to better help the patients in order to achieve the best health outcome. I work in a clinic as well as inpatient pharmacy, additionally, I had my rotations at CVS and Regions Hospital. all these experiences shape my version of the pharmacists at different settings. Therefore, in various pharmacy settings, pharmacists can work differently with the whole healthcare team. The recent PED-Rx events inspired me how important pharmacists can play roles in when working in a team.

Nurses help organize and manage patient’s transition to home whereas the pharmacist calls the patient after discharge to review their medications. Any problems with medications are communicated to the primary provider.

Medication Reconciliation is defined by the Joint Commission as the process of checking and rechecking a patient’s current medication list to the patient’s orders. Within a MedRec program, three steps must be followed to ensure patients have the correct medications at admission and discharge: Verification, Clarification, and Reconciliation (Greenwald et al., 2010; Ruggiero et al,. 2015). MedRec should not occur once, but multiple times especially when a patient moves from department to department. The more a patient moves, the more liable they are for a medication error due to poor communication. MedRec is done for the simple reason of catching those medication errors and correcting them before they can do any harm (The Joint Commission, 2006). Medication errors effect nearly 1.5 million people who enter the hospital setting in the USA. At least every patient has one medication discrepancy between admission and discharge, which leads to rehospitalizations due to hospital-setting medication errors (Institute of Medicine as cited by Wilson et al,. 2015). With nurses at the forefront of a patient’s medication regime, pressure is put on them to provide the necessary education and safety to prevent medication related rehospitalizations. Included in the causes for medication errors is miscommunication between departments taking care of the same patient (Allison et al., 2015). Many medication errors are preventable by the implementation of electronic orders. The use of electronic

Breeding, et al. (2013) states that there are a number of published documents addressing the quality, safety, and explicitly medication safety within ICUs worldwide. A large proportion of these studies focused on specific interventions such as: (1) creating “No interruption zones”; (2) addressing drug incompatibilities; (3) implementing automatic drug dispensing systems or electronic prescription of medications; or (4) implementing an ICU pharmacist role (Breeding, et al., 2013, p. 59). It is essential for multidisciplinary teams to be formed for medication safety promotion within this population. These teams would include physicians, pharmacists, and nurses (to also include advanced practicing nurses [APRN], such as nurse practitioners [NPs] or clinical nurse specialists

Currently, more responsibilities are being given to the pharmacy technician that were traditionally performed by pharmacists, such as clarifying prescriptions and entering orders. With these additional responsibilities for the pharmacy technician, this will allow the pharmacist to spend additional time with patients. However, with these additional responsibilities enables more opportunities for error. In 2008, a study was performed at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital, a 178 bed acute care facility

Pharmacists have many different responsibilities to their patients, these include promoting patient’s safety through checking the patient’s medication and keeping good records every time a patient fills a new prescription or refills prescription filled (Leagle, 1994). Pharmacists should also improve

When I say this, however, most people would picture the nurse giving the wrong medication due to lack of focus on the tasks at hand. While this could happen, I have noticed during my time at hospitals that the doctor orders are still hand written for the most part. Consequently, they can be very hard to be read legibly much less correctly translated into proper medication dosages. The first suggestion I would give to an organization would be that they required all orders to be submitted securely, by the doctors, to the pharmacy be electronic means.

The article is, Evaluating the Impact of Medication Cabinets in Patient’s Rooms on a Medical-Surgical Telemetry Unit, and it is a study about the impact of medication cabinets in each patient’s room on the administration of medication. In the article it states, “Nurses spend 27% of their time on medication-related activities and over 73% of their time on nonmedication-related activities, and they are responsible for 26-38% of medication errors in hospitalized patients,” (Arinal, M. F., Cohn, T., & Avila-Quintana, C., 2014, pg. 77). From personal experience in the hospital, it is no surprise that nurses spend so much time on medication administration. A majority of the morning is spent gathering supplies and

However, this medication was not covered on the patients plan and required us to submit a prior authorization form. This task required me to contact the patient’s dialysis center where I got to discuss with the patients nurse about lab values, medication history, and health conditions. I was then able to gather enough information to form an adequate justification for the patient’s use of Veltassa instead of Sodium Polystyrene Sulfonate, and began a prior authorization submission. After submitting the form to the insurance, I had to once again contact the nurse so that they could then verify and complete their portion of the prior authorization form through the web site Covermymeds.com. This encounter provided a great example of inter-professional teamwork as both parties got to understand more about each other’s role in health care. On the pharmacy side, the nurses got to see how pharmacists could help provide their insight on medications to find alternatives for patients with special circumstances. On the nurse’s side, the pharmacist can see how nurses play an important role in helping patients get the specific care needed even as the patient steps out of their workplace.

In today’s current fast-paced and demanding field of heath care, medication administration has become complex and time-consuming task. Approximately one-third of the nurses’ time is used in medication administration. There is much potential for error because of the complexity of the medication administration process. Since nurses are the last ones to actually administer the medication to the patient therefore they become responsible for medication administration errors (MAE). Reasons for MAE may include individual factors, organizational factors or system factors. This paper will discuss the root causes analysis of MAE and strategies to prevent them.

After the interview with my nurse manager, I came up with the PICO question which states: “Does the computerized physician order entry (CPOE) system reduce the number of medication errors compared to the common paper system being used today?” This question is important and I selected it because the population that the Belvoir Community hospital serves includes army officers of all ages both active and retired including their spouses and children. This group includes two sub groups of highly vulnerable persons which include the very young and the very old, who have a high-risk effect for medication errors because the potential adverse drug event is three times greater than an adult hospitalized patient (Levine et al., 2001). CPOE is not a panacea, but it does represent an effective tool for bringing real-time, evidence-based decision support to physicians. Nurses are the last defense level of protection against medication errors, and are solely responsible for the dispensing, administering, and monitoring of medications. In healthcare, computers can be used to help facilitate clear and accurate communication between health care professionals. When using a CPOE system it allows physicians to type in prescriptions right into the device or computer which significantly lessens any mistakes that can occur when

Pharmacists play a very important role in helping patients feel better and get well as quickly as possible. Patients tend to do better when pharmacists are part of their healthcare team because pharmacists are able to help manage their medications. Pharmacists improve medication adherence. They are clinically competent healthcare providers who communicate effectively to evaluate many factors that affect a patient’s ability to take a medication. These factors include diet, lifestyle, side effects, reactions, and much more.Pharmacists work with other health care professionals to help improve health outcomes. Numerous studies have proven that the presence of a pharmacist on hospital rounds as a member of the patient care team has been shown to