Barcode Meds/Patient

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Anyone out there have barcoding for administering meds to patients? We barcode at our hospital and as a new nurse I really like it. We scan all the meds and then scan the patient when we administer them. Just wondering how common this is.

Someone on this thread asked me to respond when our system got started up as to how I like it......medication administration by barcode.

Well........I like it. I really think I'm going to like it. I have worked with it a few days now, and I'm getting my meds done within the time frames alloted.

I think it is going to be much faster than trying to read those messy paper MARS.

We still have some bugs to be worked out and some questions that we {the nurses} need answered, but I am sure that within time we will get that taken care of.

Some of our barcodes do not work and we have to manually enter to administer the medication. That is one of the bugs that has to be worked out.

We have one nurse who only works 20 hrs/week and she didn't make much of

an effort to attend the training sessions that were offered for 2 days, last Wed. and Thurs. So guess who had to do major assisting to that nurse tonight......you got it.....me.

She couldn't get logged on, she couldn't get the computer do this or do that, or she couldn't figure this or that out.

Well, I've worked there 26 years, and we work 10hrs/day, and leave at midnight and she is part time....20hrs/week. I had to help her, because I could not in good conscience go off duty at midnight and leave her there fighting with that computer.

But I am not the only one who helped her....the third nurse also helped her.

{There were 3 of us tonight.}

Okay, I'm thru ranting about that.

But I really think the computer will be good when everyone gets used to it, and we get all the bugs worked out and our questions answered.

This program is being written for us to fit our specific needs, according to the man who is writing it. It is also being used at some other facilities in Arkansas.

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Specializes in ER.

As good as this system seems to be, I have to wonder about its practicality in places like the ER where we often have patients who need meds RIGHT NOW who haven't even been registered into the system yet, or whom we don't have a CLUE who they are. Anyone have any experience with this kind of a system in the ER? Currently our accuchecks can be scanned with the patient armband and the barcode on our badges for our personal user ID - however the thing rarely actually scans anything, so we usually end up typing things in. I cna't imagine how inconvenient this system COULD be if it is moved to medications as well. Any thoughts?

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Specializes in tele, stepdown/PCU, med/surg.

My hospital is starting to get ready for barcoding and computers on wheels. I am not all that excited about it as I do not want the computer to stop me if I'm 31 minutes late on a med as another poster mentioned.

Also, I'm extra careful and pride myself in being extra careful not to make med errors. So now the hospital is gonna spend so much money on barcoding and all those computers on wheels. Thousands of dollars and will we really be safer? Maybe for some people but it's really not worth the money in my opinion.

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I can see where, in the particular situation that I work in, that it is going to be a help. It seems it will be more efficient, easier to read than the paper MARs,

however, we do have a time limit. There are things on my job that will cause us to get behind on our med rounds, and if that happens an explanation has to be give on every medication on every patient.

However, I cheat on that one.....I give one explanation on one medication, and over ride it on the rest for that patient.

I figure it will be printed one time on that patient and that should be enough. I'm not doing it on every medication for every patient. That's ridiculous.

But so far I'm liking ours.

On our paper MARS we had people with extremely bad handwriting, I could not always read what they had written, things were yellowed out and restarted, they were just a mess.

I think when we get the bugs worked out it will be great.

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Specializes in LTC, MDS/careplans, Unit Manager.

i used this system at a previous job and my current facility is gearing up to initiate this as well. my last job was at the va and i worked on a ltc unit. we had trouble with the ink wearing of the armbands really quickly (sometimes after only a couple of days). we found that if you covered the barcode on the new armband with a strip of scotch tape it would last much longer. it is aslo nice that you can run a "missed meds list" at the end of your med pass to be sure that you administered all of the meds that were ordered. just another way to double check yourself. i really liked this system and am excited to get it going at my current job.

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We also use barcodes and scanners for meds where I work. There are the obvious problems, like when the meds won't scan, especially when the hospital buys meds from a different company who's barcodes are not in the system. We use portable MAC carts with wireless scanners, and we can even use the portable carts to do admission assessments right from the patient's room. Drawback to this, though, is that the admission assessment is in a certain sequence in the computer and it won't let you jump around (like how the patients actually give you the information). Also, our biggest problem seems to be the battery life of the scanners and carts. Nothing more frustrating than being in the middle of an admission assessment or med pass and having the carts go dead on you. Then you have to reboot the cart and start from square one.

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As good as this system seems to be, I have to wonder about its practicality in places like the ER where we often have patients who need meds RIGHT NOW who haven't even been registered into the system yet, or whom we don't have a CLUE who they are. Anyone have any experience with this kind of a system in the ER? Currently our accuchecks can be scanned with the patient armband and the barcode on our badges for our personal user ID - however the thing rarely actually scans anything, so we usually end up typing things in. I cna't imagine how inconvenient this system COULD be if it is moved to medications as well. Any thoughts?

I don't believe our ER uses the scanners and carts for meds. Everything they give is documented by hand on the ER flow sheet.

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Specializes in Critical Care, Cardiac Cath Lab.

My previous hospital uses scanners for patients' armbands and medications. They recently installed computers in all patient rooms with wireless scanners (prior to that we had to wheel a computer into the room which was kind of annoying). They also just upgraded to a new Pyxis that uses a biometric fingerprint reader instead of a typed password for user authentication. I was a computer geek in my former life, so I love this stuff! :)

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May1 we are going to emar, and it is heartening to read this thread.

I have several complaints based on my practice sessions (mainly physical complaints regarding the handheld device, or concerns regarding night shift, when we only have one pharmacist for the entire hospital--how is a med going to get entered into the system if the pharmacist is assisting in a code--should my patient just have to wait for pain meds?), but I am really pleased to hear how many of you like your barcoding system. That really is encouraging to me!

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May1 we are going to emar, and it is heartening to read this thread.

I have several complaints based on my practice sessions (mainly physical complaints regarding the handheld device, or concerns regarding night shift, when we only have one pharmacist for the entire hospital--how is a med going to get entered into the system if the pharmacist is assisting in a code--should my patient just have to wait for pain meds?), but I am really pleased to hear how many of you like your barcoding system. That really is encouraging to me!

This is an update on the system that is being put in at my work.

Yesterday most of our computers were down. There were some men from an electrical company there doing some work on the whole facility's electrical system, so that affected the computers. We had some working but not all of them.

The DON printed us out some "work sheets". The same information that is in the computer. So we had to use that in some areas.

We have 8 homes for our people, and a med cart and a computer in each home.

Also, there are other little problems that are coming up, that couldn't be seen until the system had been in place for awhile. For instance alot of our b/p's and pulses we check/count before giving certain meds, are not showing up in the MAR report.

I had told the DON we needed more of a grace period than 3 days, but she didn't think so. Oh wellllllllllllll!

I still like the idea, and hopefully it will get better.

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I work at a hospital where the meds, accuchecks, and most of our supplies are barcoded. This works out good most of the time, except when you have something that won't scan. When this happens it can be a real pain.

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Specializes in ER (new), Respitory/Med Surg floor.
May1 we are going to emar, and it is heartening to read this thread.

I have several complaints based on my practice sessions (mainly physical complaints regarding the handheld device, or concerns regarding night shift, when we only have one pharmacist for the entire hospital--how is a med going to get entered into the system if the pharmacist is assisting in a code--should my patient just have to wait for pain meds?), but I am really pleased to hear how many of you like your barcoding system. That really is encouraging to me!

My hospital converted too to scanning meds and pts. It does catch stuff which is great but I don't like the physical set up. We have a lap top on a cart with the scanner connected on a wire to the lap top. Also there's a shelve on top of the keyboard, and keyboard slides out so you can put meds on top. But you have to push this cart around and if it's busy the cart is in constant use and the batteries go dead then you have no computer to pass meds for a while. This is so frustrating. Our scann also has an area to be placed on the R side of the lap top, which is what we were taught, but the wire then hangs down and gets caught in the R wheel of the cart and you'r trying to tug it out. Now there seem no real good way to place it anywhere. People then wrap it to the front and then it really gets twisted. It should have a retractable wire or wireless. The wheels are disgusting with filth and grime now. Not to mention there is barely ANY room in pts rooms and your dragging this cart. At times you get caught on something and must just be loaded with infectios material. I am really upset with isolation. We are required to use it even with these pts. We wipe the wire and computer down with disinfection wipes. We were suppose to get a portable one that one floor was trying out, but never got them. Not to mention when the computers go down you revert to paper and have to back track an ENTIRE chart.

Now I LOVE computers. But idealy in each room in the WALL should be this setup to bypass ALL of that. Cost is the huge factor but I think the best solution some of my coworkers have come up with. OR some type of handheld system.

The system is great just provide us the right setup.

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