Safe Medication Identification

In 2003, The Joint Commission made one of their first goals to improve the accuracy of identifying patients to reduce or eliminate patient identification errors. This continues to be an accreditation requirement. Their recommendations to do this are to use at least two patient identifiers when administering medications, and when providing treatments or procedures. Acceptable identifiers may be the individual’s name, an assigned identification number, telephone number, or other person-specific identifier. Patient room number or physical location may not be used as an appropriate identifier. Healthcare provides should re-identify the patient with each encounter, each medication pass, and each procedure. There have been procedures and protocols throughout the country have been put into place to make the care provided to patients safer. Another element of this requirement is that all containers should be labeled in the patients presences after using the patient identifiers

Step1: Physician or nurse practitioner order a new medication in Epic. Time spent: 5 minutes

* Reduction of medication errors- Barcode medication administration safeguards against wrong pt/wrong med/wrong dose errors and alerts to potential medication interactions (Goth, 2006).

As per Steve Jones request , from today all the prescriptions must be kept in the security safe.

Non care setting - Medications are often stored and administered in a variety of non-health care settings. These settings include: primary and secondary schools, Child day care centres, Board and care homes, Jails and prisons. In all these settings, employees frequently are responsible for handling and administering prescription and over-the-counter medications to clients or residents. Some organizations may employ licensed health professionals to directly manage the medication administration process. However, many of these settings have no licensed health professionals involved. Where medications are stored and administered to individuals, written policies and procedures should address the following: Acquisition of medications (e.g., from parents, caregivers, pharmacies), Specification of which personnel are allowed access to medications and allowed to administer medications to students, clients or residents, Labelling and packaging of medications managed for students, clients

Medication errors are among the most significant cause of patient injury in all types of medical errors (Johnson, Carlson, Tucker, & Willette, n.d). In the nursing profession, medication administration errors occur 34% of the time, second only to physician ordering errors (Gooder, 2011). The introduction of information technology, such as the Bar Code Medication Administration (BCMA), offers new opportunities for reducing medication administration errors. BCMA was developed by the Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center in 1998 to help improve the documentation of medication administration, decrease medication errors and provide

The units established an alarm management team in 2013 with the goal to meet the requirements of NPSG.06.01.01. The team consisted of representatives from clinical engineering, the Yale School of Nursing, information technology, nursing management, performance improvement, physician leadership, and bedside clinical staff. The team began by using the gap analysis assessment tool provided by AACN.3

Alarm fatigue is a growing national problem within the health care industry that links medical technology as a serious hazard that poses a significant threat to patient safety within hospitals across the country. Alarm fatigue occurs when nurses encounter an overwhelming amount of alarms thus becoming desensitized to the firing alarms. Alarm desensitization is a multifaceted issue that is related to the number of alarming medical devices, a high false alarm rate, and the lack of alarm standardization in hospitals today (Cvach, 2012). Desensitization can lead to delayed response times, alarms silenced or turned off, or alarms adjusted to unsafe limits, which can create a dangerous situation for the patient. Alarm fatigue

Outcomes: Have multiple resources, support groups, physical education, and clinic, and health care access available to patients regarding treatments. Finding new ways to keep patiences on track and preventing the spread of disease.

It is evident that the multidisciplinary and complex nature of alarm management presents a multitude of challenges to healthcare organizations that must be unraveled to develop effective solutions. In recent years, the healthcare community has clearly made significant investments to learn more about the multi-faceted underlying causes of alarm fatigue to develop required interventions. Several healthcare organizations and federal agencies have published alarm management guidelines and strategies to assist the healthcare community in developing effective clinical alarm safety practices. As a result, some healthcare organizations has adopted recommended guidelines and strategies with varying success.

If patient Id's are not correct in the files, it may create a big chaos for the hospital. Since every patient Id is unique, no two patients can have same ID. If a same Id is used for different patients, it may disturb the monitoring of patients improvements, medications and even billing. There are chances of giving wrong medications to different patients based on their Id's, which in turn may even cost a person's life. Moreover, there may be cases of payment or non-payment of hospital bills between two different patients having same Id's. An erroneous Id can result in copious problems and may even put hospital at a risk of being sued for its negligence, which may result from providing wrong medication to wrong patient.

According to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, “Medication reconciliation is the process of creating the most accurate list possible of all medications a patient is taking — including drug name, dosage, frequency, and route — and comparing that list against the physician’s admission, transfer, and/or discharge orders” (Institute For Healthcare Improvement, n.d). This process includes three steps: collecting the medication history, ensuring that the medications and dosages are appropriate for the patient, and documenting the changes in the orders. This occurs when the patient is admitted, transferred and discharged from the hospital (Institute for Healthcare Improvement, 2011). The purpose is to avoid any duplications, incorrect

Goal three by the National Patient Safety Goal for 2014 is to use medicines safely. Many errors occur regularly with medications which is why communication is so important with the doctors, nurses and patients. One process that Joint Commission requires in accredited HCO’s is medication reconciliation “creating the most accurate list possible off all medications a patient is taking, including drug name, dosage, frequency, and route, and comparing that list against the physician’s admission, transfer, and/or discharge orders with the goal of providing correct medications to the patients at all transition points within the hospital (Finkelman & Kenner, 2012, p. 388)”. Ensuring medication reconciliation to the patient, health providers and any new consults that are

In order for both teams to collaborate and successfully provide care to the patient, they must possess effective communication skills. For example, both teams should be active listeners. Listening actively reflects respect for what each person is thinking. With mutual respect, team members

A study was performed at John Hopkin’s Hospital that investigated an intensive care unit and found over a 12 day period that there were over 350 alarms per patient, making a grand total of over 59,000 alarms (Sendelbach & Funk, 2013). It is no wonder that health care workers can become easily desensitized to the alarm sound, constantly listening to the repetitive alarms for an entire 12 hour shift. In addition to the constant beeps and buzzes from the alarms, many of the sounds are not “true” alarms. There are many things that can initiate a false alarm. It is said that more than 85% of hospital alarms are false, meaning that they truly do not necessitate involvement from the nurse or health care worker (Cvach, 2012; Horkan, 2014; Jones, 2014; Paparella, 2014; Sendelbach & Funk, 2013).