Hello

Is anyone doing any work with the ISMP Best Practice #3, measuring and expressing patient weights in metric units only????

Thanks

How do you handle contrast dispensing? Does pharmacy dispense? Does radiology use bulk bottles? Do you apply the 28 day expiration date or 'immediate use' since ouside a hood?

Can anyone share where they are physically disponsing of their controlled substance waste - sink, trash can, sharps container, Cactus sink, other?

Thank you!

For the medication safety officers, whom do you report to in your organization?

Pharmacy Operations manager or director?

Pharmacy clinical manager or director?

Pharmacy Department director?

A Quality/Patient Safety dept outside of Pharmacy?

thank you!

susan

Like many institutions we have moved to ideal and adjusted-body weight for our IVIG dosing. However, we are running into a new issue with the weight nurses should program into the infusion pump (we use Alaris) to calculate the infusion rate.

Good Afternoon,

  I am wondering if anyone is willing to share how you store/dispense epinephrine used topically for circumcisions? If you dispense a vial or amp how do you clearly identify that the product is to be used topically to avoid an accidental injection?

thank you,

Heather

We have been discussing some errors and we have had a discussion on what entails "life-sustaining measures." Some of these are obvious (CPR, intubation, surgical procedure, defibrillation and are clearly defined by NCC MERP Index) however, we are struggling with the not so obvious. How would you classify the following interventions (life saving or not):?

1. CPAP/BiPAP use

2. Vasoactive medication use (i.e. norepinephrine)

Tomorrow's ISMP Mediation Safety Alert! notes an FDA alert for healthcare professionals about Wallcur, LLC, simulated intravenous (IV) products in human or animal patients. This is an update to an earlier alert on 12/30/14. There have been serious adverse events associated with misuse of Wallcur demonstration products. More than 40 patients actually received these solutions IV or locally and developed chills and/or sepsis; 1 patient died. One of the products, Practi-0.9% Sodium Chloride 100 mL, contains distilled water, not sterile saline, so hemolysis also might be an issue.

 I am interested in information regarding the preparation and formulation of fentanyl epidurals.  Currently we are batching our epidurals in the IV room and providing them to our anesthesiologists in a locked refrigerator on the L&D floor.  The formula we use has been in practice for an undetermined amount of time, I do not know that it has ever been evaluated for best practice since I’ve been at the institution.  The bags contain fentanyl, bupivacaine, and epinephrine.  We want to make the compounding of this bag simpler, and thereby safer, by removing the epinephrine.  Do you have any

Our Medication Safety Council conducted a medication dilution survey for our inpatiet nurses similar to the survey in last summer's ISMP Alert.  After we received the results, which reflected the results found by ISMP, we determined that education needed to be provided.  Unfortunately, we aren't sure where to go from here.  Literature searches turned up very little in the way of evidence based practice for medication dilution and many of the package inserts were vague (e.g., may be diluted, dilute in 5-10mL NS or sterile water.....).  We are looking for any recommendations from others that