Error Prevention Ideas

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Hello everyone,

I currently work at a LTC facility. We have been having problems with our EMAR systems and medication checks. With the pharmacy system we have, it requires the nurse that is on duty that day to "check in" new orders that the pharmacy puts into the system. However, sometimes the pharmacy doesn't put the medication in correctly or even at all. This leads the nurse on duty to have to manually put in the medication order and then sometimes we get duplicate orders in the EMARs. Does anyone have issues similar at their LTC facility or have any ideas for how the nurses can better prevent errors? I suggested maybe have 2 nurses check in a high risk medication to prevent errors. Please keep in mind this issue had been brought up to our DON and is currently in the works but in the mean time looking for any suggestions for how we can better our current protocol for check ins.

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Specializes in Travel, Home Health, Med-Surg.

In my experience asking 2 nurses to check anything just makes something else go wrong bc of the lost time. Nurses are usually short on time so this rarely works. I would find a way without using 2 nurses. How are you getting duplicates when the pharmacy didnt put the order in. If they put it in wrong then the nurse can just dc the order and start over (or "revise" it) which would obviously result in no duplicates.

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On 11/29/2019 at 7:48 PM, janekRN said:

Please keep in mind this issue had been brought up to our DON and is currently in the works

Does this mean that someone is pursuing the possibility of asking pharmacy to do what they are supposed to be doing?

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