Does anyone have any best practices around ensuring 3-mL syringes are used to prepare 3-mL NICU doses?

We’ve had incidents of 3-mL doses dispensed in 5-mL syringes. The ordered rate was less than 0.1 mL/hr. Because the Alaris syringe pump cannot deliver a flow rate lower than 0.1 mL/hr from a 5-mL syringe, the doses had to be sent back to be prepared a second time in 3-mL syringes.

We are thinking about including syringes as components to be scanned when Dispense Prepping NICU mixtures in Epic but are running into some workflow challenges with that.

We are attempting to revamp our current compliance report to gauge the adherence of barcode scanning for inpatient pharmacy or oncology clinic pharmacy staff dispense patient specific doses using Dispense Prep and Dispense Check from data in the Electronic Health Record (EHR).

• What benchmarks has your organization set for compliance in terms of scanning medications in pharmacy prior to filling, verifying, and tracking deliveries? Is there any industry standard that you know of?