Greetings!

I am wondering if nurses at your institution are required to place a label containing 2 patient identifiers on IV fluid bags removed from automated dispensing cabinets?

We do NOT currently do this and I'm wondering about regulatory compliance with this process.

Thank you
Shelly Morvay, Medication Safety Pharmacist
Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, OH

A new requirement for performance goals has been included into annual evaluations at our institution. Would others care to share what kind of goals are appropriate to the Medication Safety Officer Position? While my primary work in medication safety is to decrease the frequency and severity of medication events, there are so many variables and factors that influence this, from event reporting rates to staff turnover, that I hesitate to pin any individual's performance on this. Thank you in advance.

Does anyone have a good titration policy or tips on how to be compliant with titrations? We were just cited for this by TJC and are looking for ways to improve. We did well with titrating at correct increments and frequency but on sedation drips we didn't have a Riker assessment with each titration rate change. I would appreciate any information you can offer if you successfully made it through a survey without a citation. Thank you

We are re-evaluating our lockout intervals for our PCA's as part of an Opioid Safety group. We currently use 8 minutes for all. Can you tell me your lockout intervals for PCA:
Morphine
Hydromorphone
Fentanyl

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

Hi Everyone,

I am writing today to ask about your institution's practice when dosing rivaroxaban for Afib. For Afib, there are two labeling recommendations based on CrCl: US and Canadian.

The Canadian labeling recommends avoiding use with CrCl < 30 mL/min. However, the US recommends avoiding use with CrCl < 15 mL/min.

Please let me know what labeling your institution follows when dosing rivaroxaban for Afib in patients with CrCl < 30 mL/min.

Thank you,

We are seeing an increasing population of dementia patients that we are having to care for long term as we cannot find placement post their acute care stay. Many of these patients remove their arm bands as soon as staff puts them on(or leg bands which we have tried).

We are in the design process of building a new pharmacy for a psychiatric hospital (census approx. 850) and is Joint Commission accredited. We currently use Pyxis and are moving to using Cerner late this year. The current pharmacy has been in place since the mid to late 1970's. We do prepare occasional IV admixtures which mainly consist of antibiotics. The architecture firm and our management is ensuring that this facility, when complete, needs to take us into the future as well. If anyone has any design elements or safety equipment we should be including, we are open to any ideas.

Do you have a single standard for dispensing INTRATHECAL products such as vancomycin IT, cytarabine IT, methotrexate IT?
Do you dispense in syringe? Or do you dispense in vial?
Thank you!

Has anyone started working on this one yet? I am wondering if "segregate from all other medications in the pharmacy" means a separate refrigerator for only NMBs or would a section of the refrigerator with separate bins for each NMB and appropriately labeling work for this best practice.

Are there any Cerner hospitals out there that have put medication level "draws" on the emar? As a way to remind the nurse to draw the levels at the right time?
Thanks