Medication errors are associated with a significant number of deaths. According to the Institute of Medicine, about 1.5 million treatment errors occur annually, resulting in approximately 7,000 deaths. Surprisingly, 70% of these errors can be prevented. Medication errors can occur at any stage of drug use, which includes ordering, rewriting, dosing, administration and monitoring. The right treatment should be given to the right patient at the right time in the right dosage and in the right way. Error at any stage of the introduction of medicine can lead to serious consequences.
The Joint Commission, the health regulatory authority, has established National Patient Safety Goals to improve patient safety. “Improving patient identification accuracy” exceeded this list of goals in 2008. A goal requires “using at least two [patient] identifiers in care, treatment or services. " Two patients are identified by administering drugs and blood products or taking blood and other specimens for clinical testing. The FDA recommends a barcode solution to reduce errors and the risk of a drug event.
Barcode and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) are two technologies that can be used to check and correct errors when taking drugs that may occur while taking drugs or blood products.
How it works?
The patient and medication data is present in the patient's wrist band, drug labels, and nursing certification. These codes (bar codes / RFID) allow you to confirm the identification of the patient, medication, dose, time and route of administration. Before you begin treating a drug or blood product, the caregiver or nurse prescribing the drug will scan these bar codes to check the details of the drug and the patient. Using this, you can warn them in case of any discrepancies in the dose, patient identity, route and medications, or if the medication dose is not required. In addition, other data can also be obtained from barcodes, such as batch number, expiration date, etc.
Implementing Control of Parked Drugs
Implementing control of parked drugs can eliminate errors that may occur during drug administration, for example, reducing the likelihood that a patient will receive the wrong medicine or wrong dosage. This improves the effectiveness of nursing without significantly affecting nursing work. Improved patient safety reduces adverse events and the associated cost of care. Improving the effectiveness of medical care and patient safety can lead to income from a hospital perspective.
barriers
While bedding systems using traditional barcodes have shown good progress in reducing errors in drug administration, these systems are not widely accepted. This may be due to a barcode identification error when parked due to a human error, handheld device error, system error and bracelet error.
Employees may resist new technologies. This may be due to a communication gap, biased knowledge of technology, or resilient to adopting changing roles. Software failures, a hardware problem related to the scanning tool, are other obstacles associated with technology that may affect the implementation of a test of parked drugs.
Founders must be trained in the use of these technologies before they can be implemented. Language and computer illiteracy makes it more complex and may require additional resources for learning to overcome this obstacle.
Overcoming these barriers
Trustees should be adequately trained by defining individual qualifications and training requirements. Any negative perception of the technology should be clarified through proper communication, in which the benefits of the technology can be emphasized to all the staff serving the patients. The limitations of technology must be recognized, and suppliers must be actively involved in removing technological barriers.
In conclusion, the introduction of technologies such as bedding, although it may seem cumbersome, can be of great importance when patient safety is considered the highest priority of any treatment procedure. With the advent of science and technology, smoother and smarter tools will soon appear that will simplify the verification process.
