Medication safety with nurses

[flynnjackson]

I am nurse involved in teaching student nurses about Medication Safety and Administration and I would appreciate some response to how you deal with things like, eg unable to read Dr's writing - what is your process in your facility? Packaging of similar appearance how is this impacting on any medication mistakes etc. Do you have to do yearly medication testing/calculations exams etc. Anything at all. Thanks

[cardiacfreak, ADN]

My facility uses CPOE (computerized physician order entry) so most of our medications are entered in the computer by the physician, however, sometimes hand written orders are done. If the nurse and pharmacist are unable to interpret the order, we call the physician to clarify.

Medications are scanned prior to giving so medication mistakes are minimal. We do not do yearly calculation exams but for those of us who are ACLS certified we have a yearly conscious sedation exam that does involve knowing the medications used and its reversal agent.

[classicdame, MSN, EdD]

we will start electronic MARS soon. Thank goodness! Meanwhile, if order is not legible we call MD. That is the only way we have found to train them to write legibly. Sometimes Pharmacy does the calling. I had an order once for insulin 70/30. Uh, would that be Novolog or Novolin because one has a dose 10 times greater than the other.