Eating Disorder Recovery Child and Adolescent inpatient care reaches Go Pro for Safety milestone
03/21/19 09:31:am
The Go Pro for Safety: Go Zero initiative for medication safety aims to ensure that each patient is being given the correct medication by using the seven rights on safe medication administration: right drug, dose, time, route, patient, reason, and documentation.
To aid in this mission, Rogers inpatient care units began using medication carts last spring equipped with a barcode scanner, allowing them to scan both medications and patient ID bracelets upon administering medication. The Child and Adolescent Inpatient Eating Disorder Recovery team was the first to achieve 100% in scanning each patient and every medication.
Paul Schneider, RN, clinical services manager, says that one of the keys that allowed the unit to accomplish this was open conversation between the team members and leadership to determine where problems were and how to best solve them.
“The biggest obstacle was the barcoding of medications being inaccurate, faded, not recording, or not available—mainly for medications brought from home instead of supplied by our pharmacy,” Paul says.
To solve this, A special Zebra printer is being used, which can print barcodes at all hours for both medications coming from our pharmacy or a patient’s home. Paul says that this has been a big step toward guaranteeing patients aren’t exposed to a medication that could create an unwanted outcome
“There are many powerful medications that are used in psychiatric care,” Paul says. “This is especially true for those in this population group that is underweight calling for different metrics to calculate dosing strengths. Patient safety is number one and this is another measure to ensure this.”
Paul says that labeling each medication on the unit was especially difficult, due to patients bringing in a disproportional number of home medications and supplements that our pharmacy doesn’t stock. He points to the nurses and pharmacy working diligently with each other on the success.
To celebrate the accomplishment, recognitions were given out at the nurses’ huddle on the unit and Daymaker points were awarded.
“I am so proud of the Child and Adolescent Inpatient Eating Disorder Recovery team for taking the time and energy to help identify gaps and address challenges,” says Terri Cohn, MSN, RN, director of nursing in Oconomowoc. “This was achieved because of their commitment to communication with pharmacy and nursing leadership. We thank this team for embracing the organization’s strong desire to enhance safety and the quality care we provide.”
