Discussing medication side effects

joslina · May 22, 2014

*tools not tow

MunoRN, RN · May 23, 2014

The main thing required is time, which is becoming increasingly difficult to come by.

Having someway of easily alerting staff to a med that is new for the patient, and triggering education about that med, seems to help, otherwise it easily gets lost. We use a pop-up to notify the nurse when the patient is receiving a new med, there's also a box in that pop-up to click when the education has been done, if it not's clicked when the first dose is given it will keep popping up with each dose until it's been clicked.

Nurse Kyles, BSN, RN · May 28, 2014

We are struggling with medication side effect education as well. I like the pop up idea. That is the lowest area on our HCAHPS surveys.

TopsDrop, RN · May 29, 2014

We recently undertook a pretty large intiative on this very subject at my hospital. Our HCAHPS scores were pretty low on the medications side effects portion. Over the past 6 months we have seen significant improvements in these scores. Here is a brief run down of what our practice council came up with.

1. Any time a new medication is to be administered to a patient. Pharmacy puts the word "new" next to it on both the computer screen and in the ADU so the nurse is alerted.

2. We have a binder of our most comonly prescribed medications and their side effects printed on stickers and placed in the med prep room.

3. We also have a sheet with grid for said stickers (or written info) on the new medication that is to be given to the patient and placed on the bedside for reference at any time.

4. The nurse giving the first dose of this new medication is to fill out the "new medications" sheet and go over the side effects with the patient and leave the sheet at the bedside for the patient and oncoming nurse to see/add on to if necessary.

5. We also have printable information we give at this time.

We are still modifying this as we go along but has shown some very good promise. I can go more in depth if anyone is interested, either in thread or via PM.

delphine22 · May 29, 2014

Our EMAR lists common side effects for most drugs, as a reminder for the nurses when we are scanning the drugs, so we can go over side effects of each during each pass. We don't have any formal flags for new drugs; it's "assumed" that the nurse who gives the first dose will also give printed information to the patient, but if I'm the person giving the second dose I will double check and give the information myself. I work night shift and recognize we often have more time to print out stuff than day shift.

I do like the flag from pharmacy if it's a new drug; I will bring that up at the next P&T committee.