Computerized med system

Might it have been McKesson? If so I believe they have two systems. One system that uses a hand held PC (admin-rx) to scan medications and patient bar codes. Another uses a COW (computer on wheels) which allows for charting on patients and has a scanner attached to it to serve the same purpose as the hand held PC.

We use mckesson hand held system and really do love it. At first the staff including I thought it was a pia and using written mars was easier but it is quicker to look up information and honestly it is so much safer for everyone.

All of our charting is computerized. For my own needs, I :redbeathe it! It's fast, easy, individualized to each patient, and it makes things like hourly documentation a breeze. Not to mention, I can click on a little icon and it takes me to things like the med information or PDR, I can send a note to the pharmacy or check out an x-ray. Fab.

The only downsides I find are that it supports some staff's laziness (you can copy information from one column to another, and that often includes errors), and some days I feel like I spend as much time with IT as I do my patients (though those are infrequent).

I adore our computerized med system!

We scan the med & scan the patient.

It saves busy nurses from potential errors from what I've seen, by flashing a warning if anything is abnormal with the rights of the med.

But, nothing is a substitute for our system of verifying & I agree that some computerized med systems support lax practices.

Good luck in your new position!

I use the McKesson Admin-Rx program. Once I got used to it, it got to be pretty nice. Although we scan the meds and the patient's arm band, we still have to ask the pt their name and DOB. It has been proven to cut our med errors way down!

Thanks for your replies. I think it must be the McKesson.

Unbelievably, one hour after I posted this question I had a medical crisis that landed me the hospital - the one I'll be working in. I saw the hand-held scanner and the computer on wheels.

While eating dinner at around 6:35 pm, I noticed a strange glare over my left eye. I covered my right eye and freak - couldn't see out of my left! I took my blood pressure and took a baby aspirin thinking I could be having a TIA as mother did a few years ago - her only symptom was transient unilateral vision loss. She recovered sight in that eye. Though I'm 20 plus years younger at this point than she was when it happened to her.

Saturday night in the ER. RN comes in to take blood and start an IV - not too happy as I'm not in his block of rooms - RN who has this room is busy with a lady next room over having an abdominal aortic aneurism. ER doc looks with an opthalmascope - can't really see anything grossly wrong, but since it's an eye and there was a concern of something evolving, they admit me and I get upstairs by 1:30, though (thank God) the cat scan of my brain was negative.

Saw the Opthamologist by late Sunday afternoon - he brought in his magnifier scope on wheels. Central retinal occlusion. Retina is white/ ischemic. Permanent loss of sight in my left eye. There is a small 60 - 90 window of time when something can be done to reverse this (tpa, hyperbaric oxygen).

Then the question - where did this come from? So now it was Sunday - have to wait till Monday for the testing - Transesophageal echo, MRi of head and neck, doppler ultrasound. I was told they all seemed normal.

Additional coag studies drawn this morning - a coagulopathy? Don't know yet. I'm home and will f/u with neurologist next week. I just read a medical article on central retinal artery occlusion and it says "Life expectancy of patients with central RAO (retinal artery occlusion) is 5.5 years. Very depressing as I am 50 years old and my son who is 14 now will barely be turning 20, and my daughter 25.