Case Study : Patient Safety And The Knowledge Of Santiago 's Health Leaders

It’s not simply the particular giving of the medications that fare up all the time. It is checking the medical record with the hand written prescriptions, grouping the varied medications and also the instrumentation for giving them, and ensuring all the patients safety measure are covered.

Medication errors may result in a decline in patient’s health increasing their hospital stay and if they are on Medicare it will not pay for the extra days. “A common economic evaluation of health care decision-making is a cost effective analysis, which compares costs of alternative interventions that produce a common health outcome” (Dearholt, S. & Dang, D., 2012. p. 134). “To help prevent such errors, technology has been developed to verify medications by incorporating bar-code verification technology within an electronic medication-administration system (bar-code eMAR)” (Poon et al., 2010. p.

Assess patient’s environment like bed side rails, call lights within patient reach, allergic bands among other interventions established by the hospital as arm bands before administrating medication plus incorporating the using the barcode scanning system.

Improved patient safety is the most essential advantage of the BCMA system. “On average a hospital patient is subjected to at least one medication error per day (IOM, 2006)”(Foote). BCMA significantly reduces medication errors that cause a compromise in patient safety. The BCMA verifies the five rights of medication administration before a patient receives a medication by the software alerting the nurse if there is a contraindication between the medicine scanned and the patient’s orders. A pilot study conducted at a 300-bed community hospital found that the BCMA system reduced medication errors by 80% (Foote). Fowler et al states that “decrease in errors related to the wrong patient was a direct result of the bar code system (Fowler).”

The pharmacy, nursing, and informatics department were required to be involved in implementing the bar-code-assisted medication administration (BCMA) patient safety initiative. The involvement of the informatics department was required for planning and coordination of the electronic medication administration record and the scanning devices. The nurses were administering the medications so they were required to undergo training on BCMA methods and the importance of BCMA implementation. Pharmacists were needed to assist nurses in case if a scanning error occurred. Pharmacy, nursing, and informatics staff members were responsible for evaluation of the BCMA system upon implementation.

In the classroom, it is very important to have lab safety. In a hospital pharmacy, lab safety is essential to ensuring a safe dosage to each patient. Throughout my time interning as a pharmacist at the UVM Medical center, I was often observing how much pharmacists used DoseEdge software. DoseEdge automated system that assists the process of dose routing and preparation. This product of Baxter has allowed the tasks of pharmacy change. The focus of my project was “How does current and future technology affect efficiency and accuracy in pharmacy practice?”. Through my research of Baxter’s website, articles about their product, and reports of advancing technologies in pharmacy, I found that DoseEdge is very successful in productivity and safety in the workplace. Before DoseEdge, everything was required to be prepared by hand. This required a lot of responsibility for for pharmacists and technicians to make the correct dosage in the quickest manner. Medicine is very important to a hospital, so it is very important to have the most efficient way in preparing and distributing it. This allows pharmacist to have a better way of double-checking the preparation of drugs. In each IV hood, there is an overhead camera that takes pictures of what drug and how much of it the technician is using. Pharmacist can view multiple orders all by computer without the need of being physically next to the technician. There are also requirements to have two pharmacists check the same order for high risk drugs like chemotherapy. This

Medication errors are among the most significant cause of patient injury in all types of medical errors (Johnson, Carlson, Tucker, & Willette, n.d). In the nursing profession, medication administration errors occur 34% of the time, second only to physician ordering errors (Gooder, 2011). The introduction of information technology, such as the Bar Code Medication Administration (BCMA), offers new opportunities for reducing medication administration errors. BCMA was developed by the Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center in 1998 to help improve the documentation of medication administration, decrease medication errors and provide

The following articles were reviewed for the purpose of addressing bar code scanning in medication administration. Nursing requires the critical skill of accurate medication administration. The use of electronic medication administration has brought about many changes in the healthcare field. The article,” What Determines Successful Implementation of Inpatient Information Technology Systems” (Spetz et al 2012), was reviewed to address the above question. Computerized patients records and bar-code medication systems continue to gain favor in healthcare. This idea spread across the nation in all VA sites (Spetz et al., 2012, p. 157), providing a safer environment for patient care.

This is a journal study to investigate the perceptions and opinions of the professional community pharmacy staff about the causes of dispensing errors and strategies to prevent these errors. A survey was completed by pharmacists and pharmacy technicians in 49 community pharmacies and the response rate was 90.9% (Lopes, Joaquim, Matos & Pires, 2015). Handwritten prescriptions were the most single cause of medication errors 51.5% and drugs with similar packages 45.6% (Lopes et al., 2015). Checking prescriptions and confirmation of drugs through barcodes was 97% which were the most agreed prevention methods (Lopes et al., 2015). This article would not only be useful to pharmacy personnel but to other health practitioners or students performing research. In addition, a study similar to this could serve as an example (initiative) that may benefit management. Such initiative would be implemented to help improve medication

Encourage the use of computer-generated or electronic medication administration records. Plan for the implementation of computerized prescriber order entry systems. Consider the use of machine-readable code (i.e., bar coding) in the medication administration process. Use computerized drug profiling in the pharmacy. Be a demanding customer of pharmacy system software; encourage vendors to incorporate and assist in implementing an adequate standardized set of checks into computerized hospital pharmacy systems (e.g., screening for duplicate drug therapies, patient allergies, potential drug interactions, drug/lab interactions, dose ranges, etc.)”. (Association,

While the use of barcode technology has had many applications in hospitals for quite some time it has only recently been used to address patient safety. Mitch Work (2005) views bar code technology as a particularly promising advance in the effort to reduce medical errors. Barcodes provide a valuable verification of medication administration by assuring that the "five rights" are confirmed: right patient, right medication, right dose, right time, and right route of administration. The use of barcode technology at the patient's bedside has shown notable gains in reducing medication administration errors, which may account for as many as 7,000 deaths per year in U.S. hospitals.

The project will be presented in detail and the importance of the need for a change in our current practice. The future objective will be providing this information to the South Carolina Labor and Licensing Board for review and possible inception. The power point presentation would provide information about medication errors, the on-going issues, the failure to keep medication administration safe and the purpose to standardize appropriate practices that will be made aware to all non-licensed facilities under the Lutheran Homes of South Carolina umbrella. The MED Tech training will be made available to current med techs and new hires that are Certified Nursing Assistants or Medical assistants with at least a year of patient care skills on our Health Care Academy websites where the staff has unlimited access. This will health, promote the knowledge, understanding and importance of medication administration in the correct manner while maintain safety for all

The safety of medication administration has become a universal issue and crucial for one 's wellbeing. The majority of hospitalized patients are treated with medications (Agyemang & While, 2010). The medical treatment of patients has a direct effect on the patient 's quality of life. Srinivasan declared "patients have a right to know they are receiving safe care" (as cited by Zhani, 2012, p. 1). The purpose of this paper is to identify current quality and safety issues in healthcare, share the impact the issues have on health care delivery, identify quality improvement strategies, and to reveal a plan to implement quality improvement strategies.

Additionally, the facility should have a system in place that alerts the staff regarding high dosages. One way to alert the pharmacist would be via a computerized system that monitors the dispensing of all medications. The system should contain an up to date database for referencing medications. Also, the computerized system should have parameters set for alerting pharmacy and nursing staff for all high dosages. When taking cost into consideration, the facility might not have the feasibility to implement an entire computerized dispensing system that provides dosage alerts and cross check off of medications. To maintain patient safety with limited funds, the facility should have remote access to a pediatric pharmacy where all pediatric medications can be cross-checked and verified. If the facility was unable to have a pediatric pharmacist on staff, the remote access would provide a safety net for pediatric medication dispensing. In addition to the pharmacy staff having access to a computerized system, the physician should as well. Had the physician had computer access and been required to enter medication orders, the tenfold error could have been noted and not reached baby Miguel.

Nursing in today?s society involves more than technical skills, critical thinking, and compassion. It also is changing to add the ability to not only understand but be able to utilize technology to impact a patient?s health. There are many technological changes employed in healthcare practices, however, I have chosen to address bar-code medication administration or BCMA. According to an article in the Journal of Patient Safety, ?bar-code medication administration has been shown to be effective in reducing patient medical errors, yet is still only utilized in 5% of the country?s health care facilities? (Sands, Slebodnik, & Young, 2010). Medication errors are common in hospitals and often lead not only to patient harm, but also lengthy hospital stays and law suits. ?One study identified 6.5 adverse events related to medication use per 100 inpatient admissions, more than one fourth of these events were due to errors and were therefore preventable? (Bane, et. al., 2010).