The last facility I was in went to the "baggie" system. We had lap tops on our med carts and we had to sign in every shift. The bags were strung together and had morning, noon, evening, and noc meds all in one. The special meds (i.e...antibiotics, coumadin, etc...) were seperate. There was a scanner on the cart and once you brought up the patients pictures and list of meds, you would scan each barcode on the package for the appropriate time and if the med was wrong, it would buzz you, otherwise it would place a check mark in the box with the med. Then when you hit record all, it would list the meds that you scanned and then you would have the chance to put in pulses or b/p's etc...then you would hit record again and a small box would come up asking if you were sure and then you hit ok and the patients picture would gray out so you would know that you gave the meds. It is very smooth and eliminated a lot of errors but the pharmacy would still make errors and place the wrong pills in or not at all. You still have to check them carefully. Also you would refill the cart 3 days a week so you would always have supply. You had to watch the CMT's too because sometimes they would miss things. It did save a lot of time.
