Essay on Qr Codes and Nursing

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).”

* Reduction of medication errors- Barcode medication administration safeguards against wrong pt/wrong med/wrong dose errors and alerts to potential medication interactions (Goth, 2006).

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

The following paper explores eight published articles that address the issue of bar code scanning for medication administration and patient safety. Online research was conducted to locate and review articles which are included in review of literature, and to acquire accurate information addressing the issues discussed. The understanding of Bar Code Scanning for Medication Administration (BCMA) is a valuable tool, providing safe practice needed to reduce medication errors leading to safer patient handling. Patient safety is defined by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) as the prevention of harm caused by errors of

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

Health information technology or HIT is a huge part of the dashing changes in how medications are prescribed, dispensed, and administered by using technologies electronic devices to share and manage patient information, instead of doing it the old fashion way which was over the phone, having all patients’ records and files on paper, and using the old fax method. Everything is computerized, from managing the

This information is important when counseling individuals so that we don’t violate the patient’s privacy. Patients may disclose protected health information such as medical issues and medications during interviews or while filling out paperwork. Knowing that sharing this information is a HIPAA violation and has legal ramifications can save us from a lot of unwanted trouble. Also, knowing this will allow us to take extra care not to leave documents such as files or paperwork laying around that contains patient information. It allows us to know not to discuss with others, what a patient discusses with us. This information informs us of who we are allowed to share this information with. Sometimes it might be necessary to share information with a patient’s doctor in order to coordinate treatment or other services. In addition, it might also be necessary to speak to the patient’s provider about any food / medication interactions or possible food intolerance /allergies. It is also important to know for billing

Medical records are not electronic, but paper, which causes them to become lost or misfiled. Physicians need readily access to patient records so they can treat patients effectively.

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.

Bar coding has been introduced into many hospitals in the last several years. Using bar codes on patients ID bracelets and labels for specimens has been the normal practice for Saint Francis Hospital for some time. However, the labels aren’t used as well as they should be to prevent errors in patient care. According to Wickham, Miedema, Gamerdinger, and DeGooyer (2006), implementing the use of bar codes for patient identification will prevent

A Research study completed by Bonkowski et al. in 2013 showed that Barcode-Assisted Medication Administration (BCMA) can help to reduce medication administration errors by 40-70% in hospitalized patients. BCMA was implemented at Baylor Scott and White Medical Center- Hillcrest (BSWMC-H) in September of 2014. Since then BCMA scan rates have been well below the expectations for the Emergency Department (ED). In July 2015, BCMA rates for the department were 77% resulting in a medication error rate of 0.74 per 1000 patient days.

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).

Abstract: In situations like emergency, where the immediately gained, summarized and accurate information may radically make the difference between life and death, the need for a solution that fulfills this requirement arises. Number of solutions was previously proposed including emergency card and smart cards, but each has number of cons and pros. With the rapid adoption of smartphones, QR codes (Quick Response) is the ideal substitute for the current circumstances. It can be easily read by