I am hoping someone out there has had an epiphany on how to handle "STAT" drugs that are straight draws, like fosphenytoin and oxytocin, with USP 800 regulations. If you are allowing the nurse to draw them up, how are you documenting that in your Assessment of Risk? If you are having pharmacy draw them up, how are you communicating that with OB, Neuro, ED, etc?

Over half of our 13 hospitals have non-24 hour pharmacies. We are trying to figure out how to have a consistent process in all hospitals at all times...which we realize is a tall order.

Good Morning All! We prepare certain aerosols in Pharmacy for nebulization. Currently, we dispense these agents from Pharmacy in syringes. I would like to move away from this practice. Has anyone identified an alternative/unique dispensing device for this purpose? Thanks in advance!

Our organization has recently been reviewing override data from our Alaris Guardrails and adjusting max/min for medications that are causing a high percentage of overrides. Propofol has emerged as an outlier for our organization in our ICU. Our current soft min is set at 50 mcg/kg/min but a large portion of our patients at certain hospitals are averaging 100-150 mcg/kg/min. I am wondering what other organizations have done with regard to limits on this medication since there are recommendations to try to maintain infusion rates below 67 mcg/kg/min to prevent PRIS.

Hi All
i am reviewing our alaris guardrails for heparin infusions and curious as to how other institutions are setting their guardrails mins/max's. we currently have 2 options - regular dose (below 2,500 units/hr and high dose (> 2,500 units/hr) but this seems to be causing a lot of unnecessary alerts. thinking of combining back to 1 option and trying to figure out the best soft min; soft max and hard max settings. what settings do you use at your institution? any other tips/tricks you are using to mitigate transcription issues would be much appreciated!

Hi,

Does anyone have any strategies for enhancing the safety of storage of many vaccines in a clinic setting? Although not on the LASA list, many do have similar names and appearances and with up to 15 vaccines used at one site we want to minimize the risk of a mix-up.

Thank you.

We are undertaking an overhaul of the which medications/processes require an independent double check / witness within the EMR. It is widely publicized that IDCs are commonly overused and misused. This in-turn degrades the utility of IDCs put in the correct place on correct meds/processes.

The goal would be to develop guidelines that could be used to determine if a med/process qualifies for an IDC, then it would go to the Medication Safety Team to make final determination along with other recommendations.

Hello,

I'm interested in learning about other people's experiences as it relates to Alaris Pump Modules and their Estimated Useful Life.

We utilize Alaris Pump Module 8100 and I am trying to obtain information regarding when we should look to update/replace our existing hardware. We have been unable to obtain clear guidelines on this from our BD Carefusion reps.

If administering vinca alkaloids via IV bag, is your practice to administer the medication via gravity infusion without a pump, or do you use an infusion pump and program as rapid infusion (e.g. 10 mins)?

Have you had any issues or seen disadvantages with administering as a gravity infusion without pumps?

Thank you,
Daniel

Hi,
Our large hospital system, 5 hospitals & 2 free standing EDs, is weighing the risk/benefit of labeling med bins in the Pyxis towers. One school of thought is that the med inventory stocked in the towers does not change (per policy), so labeling the bin with the med name is helpful to the RN. Aternative thought is that other meds could get loaded due to lack of space in Pyxis and it is a extra step (hence potential failure point) to re-label. The labels could also give a false sense of security to the RN who may overlook reading the med label.

For those who have had the experience in converting infusion pump vendors, have you developed a go-live risk assessment tool that you used and found beneficial? While assessments focused on drug library build would be helpful, I'm mostly looking for areas of risk to focus on related to conversion plan, day-of conversion and implementation.