What is the process at other facilities when a patient's oral intake status changes?

For example, when a patient is intubated during a hospital stay requires meds via NG (compared to previous PO admin), is your pharmacy involved in changing routes of medications or is this left to the provider to review and reconcile?

Does your EHR utilize any CDS to inform care team members of changes in route of administration?

We are looking at technician training and retention, like I am sure many are. This boarders between operations and safety. IN particular we want to: 1) visually signal to our technicians that we are investing in them and their career path and 2) ensuring the quality components (such as training/educating the "why" to avoid short-cuts and work-arounds, helping ensuring adequate training and ongoing education, ensuring training matches practice, and there is a certain level personal commitment.

Questions:

We have been doing a literature review to determine the most effective safety mechanism in preventing medication errors when using ADCs. We are trying to identify whether witness upon removal or interactive pop-up alerts lead to less medication errors.

Has anyone found data to support one over the other in certain situations or done an internal data analysis to determine which is more effective? How are you currently using these safety features and on which medications?

Thank you in advance for your input!
Kindly,
Carley

Good Morning,
I have been looking in the literature to determine the most effective safety mechanism in preventing medication errors when using ADCs. We are trying to identify whether witness upon removal or interactive pop-up alerts lead to less medication errors.

Has anyone found literature comparing the efficacy of these or completed an internal data analysis? How are you currently using these features in your system and on which medications?

Thank you in advance for your insight!

Kindly,
Carley

We are in the process of evaluating our medication administration guidelines that were historically developed for the inpatient setting and how they are applied to the ambulatory infusion setting.

For example (in the infusion center patients may receive alteplase lock flushes (Cathflo), but not alteplase infusions or bolus doses). Does your institution have drug specific guidelines for the ambulatory infusion setting or a policy/guideline with guiding principles for what can be administered in the infusion room setting that you would be willing to share?

When you compound your chemotherapy preparations, do you account for overfill vs the final labeled volume?
1. Remove "estimated" volume of overfill.
2. Add "estimated" volume of overfill to the final volume on the label.
3. Pump bags to exact base fluid volume stated on the label.
4. Do not account for overfill in the final volume stated on the label.

When you compound your chemotherapy preparations, do you account for overfill vs the final labeled volume?
1. Remove "estimated" volume of overfill.
2. Add "estimated" volume of overfill to the final volume on the label.
3. Pump bags to exact base fluid volume stated on the label.
4. Do not account for overfill in the final volume stated on the label.

Good Morning,
I was conducting a literature review to see if there is published data on whether witness upon removal or interactive pop-up alerts are a more effective safety strategy with automated dispensing cabinets. It seems there is not clear guidance - have others found this information or conducted internal studies for quality improvement? How are you using these safety strategies and for which medications?

Thank you in advance for any input!

HI All,
My organization has a 35+ year old EHR and it was "boxy but good" to qhote the movie actor. It is a mainframe with GUI applications but pharmacy works in the blue mainframe system called VistA - we could see everything. It was fast and was molded to the highest possible functionality for medication safety (like fully integrated with safety checks in our mail order pharmacy, very sophisticated clinical rules, etc.)

A topic that straddles the line between Medication Safety and Operations is the retention, training, and credentialling (formal or informal) of our staff.

What is your hospital/health-system doing, specifically for Pharmacy technicians?