Np calling in an Rx?

[jbirge]

I am a new NP- I would 99% of all the Rx's in our office are electronic. I am afraid the first time I have to call in a prescription I won't know what to do. What info do I need to call in an Rx for a pt?

Thanks!

[psu_213, BSN, RN]

Oh and I do NOT bid, qd, tid as that is no longer allowed. I always state how often as in "every 8 hours, every 12 hours, etc."

Really? I use BID/TID all the time when calling in prescriptions, and I see it on prescriptions printed from doctors' offices and from the ED. The pharmacy will change it to "every 12, 8, etc. hours," but I still see/hear BID and TID used all the time.

[traumaRUs, MSN, APRN]

Its on the Joint Commission's list of do not use abbreviations:

"In The Impact of Abbreviations on Patient Safety, Brunetti and his colleagues evaluated 643,151 total medication errors reported between 2004 and 2006 to the United States Pharmacopeia MEDMARX® voluntary program, a national database for medication errors. Of these errors, 29,974 (4.7 percent) reports were due to abbreviation use and only 18,153 met inclusion criteria. The reports were subsequently broken down into recurring themes: 1) frequency of abbreviations associated with errors, 2) error outcome, 3) node where error originated, 4) staff involved and 5) type of error.

"In our study, which was the first of its kind, we found that the most common abbreviation resulting in a medication error was the use of 'QD' in place of 'once daily,' accounting for 43.1 percent of all errors, followed by 'U' for units (13.1 percent), 'cc' for mL (12.6 percent) and 'MSO4' or 'MS' for morphine sulfate (9.7 percent)," said Brunetti.

Other findings from the study include:

The top five abbreviations resulting in patient harm were "U," "drug name," "stem," "TID" and "mcg."

Most errors occurred at the prescribing node (81 percent).

Abbreviation errors originated more often from medical staff (78.5 percent) compared to nursing (15.1 percent) and pharmacy (4.2 percent).

The top abbreviation errors were:

"sc," "HS" and "cc" for medical;

"IU," "stem" drug names and "TID" for nursing;

"BID," "ìg" and "d/c" for pharmacy."

Abbreviations May Save Minutes; Prohibiting Abbreviations May Save Lives

While I still see it, why leave yourself open to a possible medication error when its just so easy to write "every 6 hours, "every 8 hours."

Our EMR does not allow us to eRx anything except "every x amt of hours", "once per day". It goes back to what is YOUR practice. Just because someone else does it, does not make it right. And...if you make a mistake or the doseage is misunderstood and the opposing lawyer is aware of the JC comments, well....