At all costs the CDSS works with the CPOE to prevent not only errors of ordering prescriptions, or ordering the wrong prescription, but also of omission. In theory, CPOE offers numerous advantages over traditional paper-based order-writing systems. Examples of these advantages include averting problems with handwriting, similar drug names, drug interactions, and specification errors; integration with electronic medical records, decision support systems, and adverse drug event reporting systems; faster transmission to the pharmacy; and potential economic…
Using e-prescribing allows healthcare systems to save, money, time, and is safer. Less prescription paper is purchased, pharmacist fill prescription more accurately, and prescribers will have secure access to prescription history…
Electronic medication administration records (MAR) are useful in displaying medications due at specific times. Not only is it possible to sort the medications due at one time, the MAR will also alert the nurse to potential drug interactions. Late medications will be displayed in red to be easily seen. If bar coding is implemented, medication errors can be reduced by a range of 60%-97% (Hunter, 2011).…
These errors include a physician prescribing a medication that has a negative reaction with another medication that a patient is currently taking. Another error is causes by pharmacist dispensing the wrong medication because they could not properly read the handwriting on a prescription, or prescribing a dose that is too high for the patient’s current age or condition. Majority of the problems responsible for medication errors can be solved with e-prescribing. Once a physician prescribes a medication the e-prescribing system automatically checks for conflicting medications, patient allergies and other conflicts, by using the patient’s medical history as well as current and past medications list. The e-prescribing system will then notify the physician as to what is has found and why that medication cannot be safely prescribed to that specific patient. This allows the physician to explore other medication…
A conversion factor is a numerical quantity used to multiple or divide when converting from one system of measurements to another. For example, when converting milligrams to grams, the milligrams is always divided by 1000 to get the final answer in grams. If someone had 35 milligrams of NaCl and wanted to know how much 35 milligrams of NaCl would be in grams, they would divide 35mg by 1000 to determine the number of grams. 35mg x 1g/1000mg= .035g. The mg would cancel leaving the final unit as grams. Conversion factors are especially critical when administering medicine to child, because children vary greatly in weight from an adult so children cannot accept the same dosage as an adult would. The less they weigh, the less dosage they can receive. If a child receive the dosage intended for an adult the child would experience an…
The computerized databases in a pharmacy collect a host of patient information including the patient’s address, the patient’s name, the date it was filled, the place it was filled, the patient’s gender and age, the prescribing physician, what drug was prescribed, the dosage, and how many pills.…
Medication errors are reaching dangerous levels in Long Term Care Facilities and technology can help to alleviate this problem. Is there a better and more effective way of charting medications for distributing medications to help the med-pass run more efficiently? The med-pass is the process of distributing medications to an individual in a long-term care facility or other medical type setting. Incorporating Bar Code Technology, which implements electronic charting is a more accurate and more thorough way to document medications given. The use of Bar Code Medication Administration Technology will decrease the amount…
References: Asepden, P., Wolcott, J., Palugod,R. Bastien, T. (2006) Preventing Medication Errors. Retrieved December 1, 2012 from http://www.iom.edu/~/media/Files/Report%20Files/2006/Preventing-Medication-Errors-Quality-Chasm-Series/medicationerrorsnew.pdf…
Any kind of error, whether it causes no harm to the patient or kills the patient, is still an error that needs to be reported and addressed. This collection of data begins with looking at the CPOE (electronic physician orders), Pyxis dispense history, eMAR, narcotic waste history (if a narcotic error), barcode scans, and the stage that the error occurred. These are all important data pieces to collect and analyze in order to pain the picture of what happened and why. The stages of where/when the error occurred are very important for identifying patient harm. Stage one is considered a prescribing error where the incorrect drug or dose is selected for a patient. This kind of error is also the cause of illegible handwriting and/or the misspelling of a drug with a similar name (Williams, 2007). Prescription errors make up for between 1-11% of all written prescriptions (Sanders & Esmail, 2003). Stage two is where dispensing errors occur. This is considered to be selection of the wrong product where usually there are look alike and sound alike drugs involved such as Losec and Lasix. Step three and four are the preparation and administering stages and the rates of these errors vary between 3.5% and 49% (NPSA, 2007). These stages are areas of high risk within nursing practice where nurses fail to verify important information such as drug, patient, dose, time, and route (Williams, 2007). IV drugs are suggested to be as high as 25% of medication errors in these stages (Bruce & Wong, 2001). Stage five is errors in monitoring outcome. Patients take certain drugs that require continuous monitoring to ensure the dosing is correct and there are no adverse…
you choose a different standpoint that mine but i totally agree with everything you have said! I agree with you 100% that e- prescribing helps with illegible scripts! A lot of people don't have the best handwriting , so it defiantly helps that the prescription goes right over to the pharmacy so the pharmacist doesn't have to play a guessing game! Good job love your post.…
Errors made while administering medications are one of the most common patient safety, health care errors reported. It is estimated that 7,000 hospitals deaths yearly are attributed to medication administration errors, and each error can cost a health care organization over $8000 per occurrence. (Anderson & Townsend, 2015. p.18). Nurses spend a significant amount of time managing, preparing, and administering medications. Nurses can spend up to forty percent of their day, involved in tasks that center around medication administration (Bourbonnais & Caswell, 2014). Over the past few years, there has been an incredible amount of new technology introduced in health care that affect medication administration. Electronic health records, computerized order entry, smart pumps, and bar-code medication charting all add complexity to the task of medication administration. Bar-code medication administration (BCMA) is one safety measure that can be implemented that can reduce medication administration safety errors and adverse…
Patient safety is a common goal in every healthcare institution, thus eliminating abbreviations can reduce life-threatening medical errors. The most common is medication errors. Some abbreviations, symbols, and dose designations are frequently misinterpreted and lead to mistakes that result in patient harm. They can also delay the start of therapy and waste time spent in clarification. A nurse administering the wrong dosage to a patient if the physician’s handwritten abbreviations are not clear can be lethal. As well, when a patient is transferred from one care provider to another, if the medical records are written with abbreviations this could lead to tragic results. Thus providing clear, communication, unabbreviated prescribed prescriptions, reports, and records would greatly reduce medical errors. However eliminating all medical abbreviations would reduce errors but if abbreviations were eliminated it would make it very difficult on medical professionals who would have to write out very lengthy medical terms. Since everything in a patient's medical records must be documented, from s/s (signs and symptoms), to the patient's medical hx (history), to the final…
When doing the job of nursing one of the most important aspects is patient safety. The biggest danger to patients is medication. A medication error is when the nurse gives a patient the wrong medication or the dose of medication could be wrong. The danger of the medication error is that it can lead to an over dose, a reaction, or even death to a patient. There are several things to know when dealing with medication errors like who should fill it out, who should receive a completed report, why would you fill one out, what is included, and what a near miss is.…
There is a significant increase in the use of electronic prescription over the last several years. Historically, the US Government Agencies in the late 1990s explored the potential need for electronic prescribing systems to reduce clinical risk in busy hospitals and between 1999 and 2001. Later the US Institute of Medicine (IOM) published two reports, on how technology can support and improve patient safety. And in the 2001 report, “Crossing the Quality Chasm”, recommended that providers, purchasers, clinicians and patients work together to redesign the health care processes, with the goals to create an evidence-based medicine. In 2001, the US Senate came up with Medication Errors Reduction Act, a $ 1 billion federal grant programmed for healthcare…
Roughly over 1.5 million people are injured annually in the United States from medication errors. It is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. According to the National Counsel for medication error Reporting and prevention defines medication error as any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medications in the control of the health professional, patient or consumers. Medication errors are surprising common and costly in all nation. Medications administration is a complex multistep process that encompasses prescribing, transcribing, dispensing, administering and monitoring patient’s response. An error can occur at any step in this process however many errors…