EMARS

Our facility has announced we will be starting to use emars also though we don't have a date yet. I'm excited about the change but there are plenty of nurses who are nervous about the switch. I'm curious about how difficult it is to fix mistakes too.

We're going all electronic in the next few months. From what I've seen at the various in services of the computerized MARs, the edit process will be much simpler. Since all the orders will be put in by someone at the facility, there should be fewer errors.

Our facility is all computerized, charting and MARS. I have never used paper so not sure if I am of much help, but it is so much easier to comply data and for supervisors to check the MARS of the residents from thier desk, without interrupting work flow of the nurse. If a mistake is entered we can either d/c or append the entry.

The majority of the errors I've seen are omission, an entry was forgotten. There are a few that will forget to add a time or start/stop date but when looking at the MAR it will stand out once used to looking at it.

I was on a fabulous eMAR system. WOuldn't go back to paper for anything. It was part of SigmaCare, which rocked, except for the aide documentation portion. Too time-consuming.

We have Mars from the pharmacy on paper that are never right, and since we also have residents with Kaiser those we have to type up, I went on line and found a free emar trial and love it so does the staff. Made my boss put it in the budget for this year. Now. If we could get a different pharmacy, I'd be golden

NOTE-[this is from a LTC perspective] I did the end of month recaps for a 59 bed facility on paper for the past 8-9 yrs,noting every order,d/c,edits(time changes,preferences,etc),carry-overs,dx/med.on a 59 bed unit with and average of 7-9 med sheets per pt. I'd go in @ 0300 just to get my hands on the med books,had 9 printing runs (meds/notes/prns/notes/tmt/notes-you get the picture) for about 600 pieces of heavy vellum paper,then print monthly MD orders. With eMARS,all of the important content of those orders comes down to ORDER ENTRY,whether it is done by unit sec. then noted&verified by nurse,or entered by nurse herself. In our program,what the med nurse sees to administer is driven by the times entered for administration,whether by hour,shift or day of wk. If an order is obtained during the time frame the med would be administered ie"lasix 40 mg.po daily in AM",an overide to start time has to be entered(0800) so it can be started the day the order is obtained,otherwise the nurse has no idea she has a med to be give. As we continue to shift from paper to EMRs, the challenge will be to remember-THE MACHINES ONLY DO WHAT WE TELL THEM TO DO! We've been doing computerized charting for 2 yrs. now,added the eMARs recently and I"ve come to realize how much of our day to day communication regarding our care has been verbal,conversational and anecdotal. The shift from one form to another is time intensive(short-term)but the intention is to keep all pt. info in one place(EMR),and once you learn how to navigate it,it's A LOT easier to find out why Mrs.X was ordered Pamelor q HS in June 2005[migrane management],rather than digging out folder #6/12 in the med records room.

I was on a fabulous eMAR system. WOuldn't go back to paper for anything. It was part of SigmaCare, which rocked, except for the aide documentation portion. Too time-consuming.

Glad to hear this. We will be starting EMARS and ETARS in February using SigmaCare.