Hello,

At your facility, what percent of medication preparation for the OR setting is being done in the pharmacy vs. the OR vs. 503b outsourced?

What types of medications are prepared within the OR suite?

What have you done to minimize medication preparation in the OR?

Thanks in advance for your responses!

Bridget Gegorski, Pharm.D.

Medication Safety Officer

University Hospitals Office: 216-983-1307

11100 Euclid Ave Fax: 216-844-3052

Cleveland, Ohio 44106 Mail Stop: WRN 5006

Has anyone found a solution that works for managing duplicate orders on an inpatient basis? We are struggling with orders for pain in particular. We have implemented PRN mild, moderate, and severe indications but continue to see duplicates. Any help you can offer would be appreciated. Thank you.

Cortney Swiggart, PharmD
Medication Safety Officer
Methodist LeBonheur Healthcare
Memphis, TN

I am currently working in a medication safety role at my hospital. I am wondering if some of you would be willing to share how many hours your hospital dedicates to medication safety and then the size hospital that you work with?

Also do you mainly have a pharmacist that takes the lead on medication events and error prevention or his there some nursing roles related to medication safety as well?

Hello,

We have started discussing the ASHP standard IV concentration project at our hospital system. We were wondering who else was planning on migrating their current IV concentrations to match ASHP's recommendations when the final recommendation is published? What type of timeline do you plan on following? Do you foresee any barriers to switching?

Thanks!

We have about 1-2 events per month where the nurse hangs an antibiotic piggyback and forgets to unclamp the tubing. Is anyone reminding the nurses in some way to "unclamp"? Using a catchy phrase as a reminder?

Thank you,
Ann Jankiewicz, PharmD, BCPS, FASHP
Medication Safety Officer
Rush University Medical Center
Chicago, IL 60612

Hello,

I am trying to gain some insight from other Medication Safety Officers regarding how they interact with the IRB and investigational drug services.

Typically errors that occur in this space are documented as study variances and are addressed by the IRB. Do any of your sites also ask that these errors be reported internally to the hospital's voluntary error reporting system for further review?

Thank you in advance for your responses!

Sincerely,

We have chosen to not add U-500 insulin to our formulary for safety reasons. Unfortunately, we are seeing more and more patients admitted that are using this product as an outpatient and we are being asked to convert them to a U-100 product. Have any of you come up with a policy to convert U-500 patients to U-100 products that you would be willing to share? Our current practice is to just put the patients on an insulin drip, but our providers are not very happy with that option. Thank you in advance for your help.

If you use Epic, do you have a way for nurses to distinguish time critical meds (those that need to be administered within 30 minutes of due time) from other medications?

Thank you,
Ann Jankiewicz, PharmD, BCPS, FASHP
Medication Safety Officer
Rush University Medical Center
Chicago, IL

For those institutions using insulin pens:

1. Do you use patient specific barcodes for barcode medication administration (BCMA) of insulin from insulin pens?

a. If so, which EHR vendor do you use?

Recently, our facility has located limited data supporting the stability of Insulin Latus, for two weeks at a temperature of 32◦ to 40◦ F. Daily Lantus doses are prepared, patient specific, in the pharmacy, and delivered to nursing units.