Would anyone be willing to share a template that they use for their Organizational Medication Safety Strategic Plan? I am tasked to put one together for my organization and wanted to see if others had some good examples to work from.

Thank you in advance!

We are in the midst of evaluating our process of what & how suppositories are supplied to nursing by pharmacy for our pediatric patients.

does your institution have a policy/procedure on how partial suppositories are supplied to patients (do RN's cut vs prepared by pharmacy)?

do you allow more than one suppository to be given to meet ordered dose (i.e. supp is 40 mg, dose is 80 mg- allow 2 supp to be given)?

what type of glycerin and acetaminaphen suppositories do you use- liquid or solid?

Thanks!
Lindsey

Hello,

When a patch (such as clonidine) is held due to parameters, is there a process at your institution to monitor the patient and check when the patch should be given again? For example, since clonidine is given every 7 days, if it's marked as held and there's no follow up, the patient would miss an entire week of clonidine. Do nurses at your institution typically page the provider to inform, recheck again in an hour, hand off to the next shift, recheck again in a day...?

Thank you!

Does anyone have a good process for providing patient education related to Sugammadex?
An additional nonhormonal contraceptive (eg, condom, spermicide) should be used for 7 days after a dose of sugammadex in women using oral or non-oral hormonal contraception.

Who is responsible for identifying and educating patients - nursing, pharmacy, anesthesia? What does the education consist of?

our high alert policy is currently under review. RNs are not required to perform independent double check on subcutaneous administration of heparin per our current policy. We are considering if we should maintain this practice or change it to require a co-signer. What are you currently doing at your respective hospitals. Are all forms of heparin, irrespective of the route co-signed by another RN or only the IVs and the drips? Thanks for your input

What does your facility do in terms of risk mitigation for 23.4% concentrated sodium chloride? Currently pharmacy draws up and puts into an empty ViaFlex and sends up a high alert double check form with it. A new PA mentioned other facilities administered it IVP (rather than via an IVPB) and having a special 'box' in the ICU Pyxis containing the medication so I wanted to see what other facilities do. Thank you!

Due to some IV therapy errors we have had we are reviewing our practices surrounding hanging new bags. One of the topics we are debating over is whether there are recommendations regarding line labeling. Is anyone aware of guidance from any professional organizations on line labeling?

I'd also love to hear any personal opinions or experiences others have on this topic. Does it facilitate line tracing or does it cause unintended bias with line tracing?

Thanks!

We are currently reviewing our pain assessment and management policy.

Would anyone be willing to share their current policy and/or IV administration guidelines for opioids? I am interested in monitoring for continuous opioid infusions, PCAs, and IV push opioids.

I am interested in when you recommend patients be placed on continuous pulse ox, frequency of vital sign monitoring, and any additional monitoring guidelines you may have in place following IV opioid administration.

I am looking for information on interoperability logistics, caveats, etc for any institution that has Epic and uses this feature with ICU Medical Plum 360 or BD Alaris smart pumps. Thanks!

Our nursing staff is advocating for the use of locked medication carts which could be used to transport medications for multiple patients from the ADC to patient rooms for administration. Pharmacy has a number of safety concerns with the proposed process, so I am curious if anyone has been able to successfully and safely implement these types of transportation carts while remaining compliant with medication management standards.

Thank you!