I'd be interested to know if anyone has any resource that has some basic questionnaires/tools to assess perceptions of medication safety climate among pharmacy team members. I beleive Knowing the baseline might give us pointers on how specifically to address further direction.
Thank you so much

Good Afternoon,

What strategies are you all employing to meet the updated NPSG.03.05.01 from The Joint Commission on anticoagulation that goes into effect July 1, 2019? Specifically around protocols/practice guidelines for reversal and perioperative management of anticoagulants.

Hi All
Our institution has recently completed a risk assessment on the use of epidurals in our L&D population (based on ISMP safety alert from 10/4/18). One of the recommendations from ISMP is to use 'unique neuraxial connectors.' When looking into these connectors (NRFit) it appears that they are 4x the cost of our typical epidural tubing (~$7/set vs ~$28/set).

How is your organization handling respirators? For example, if a CSTD is being used during IV administration of those medications that have the potential to vaporize at room temperature (i.e. carmustine, cisplatin, cyclophosphamide, etc.) are your nurses using respirators OR are you considering the CSTD the protection? Are you just using PAPR type respirators in the event of a spill? I appreciate your guidance!

Stacie Ethington, MSN, RN-BC
Medication Safety Nurse Specialist
Nebraska Medicine

Greetings - If you use a bladder instillation cocktail consisting of triamcinolone, heparin, lidocaine, gentamicin, and sodium bicarbonate in NS, are you able to share your BUD and the reference? Thank you.

We are in the process of implementing interoperability between smart pumps and EMR. During this process we have identified that our EMR is setup to have a dual verification for chemotherapy rate changes. This is not something that was forced before but when completing the pump rate verify it ask for each rate change to be dual verified.

The standards from ONS suggest a dual verification for initial pump programming but do not go into detail regarding rate changes. APON suggest a dual verification for initial pump programming and rate changes of chemotherapy.

What safety strategies have people employed to prevent tubing mixup for TPN compounders? See brief description of our event below.

Has anyone successfully used the "shrink wrap"-type vial covers for any of their high-alert medications? For reference, I was looking at the product available from Healthcare Logistics: https://shop.gohcl.com/default.aspx?page=item detail&itemcode=16063

We are specifically considering them for use with our neuromuscular blocking medications, as applying labels to the vials is problematic space-wise.

My concern is that it looks like the shrink wrap could possibly cover important vial labeling information.

Hello,

We are hoping to learn from other pharmacies who compound autologous serum eye drops for ophthalmology patients. If you are currently preparing these drops following USP 797 standards, would you mind sharing your written procedure or provide an overview of your process?

Thank you,
Crystal

Crystal Holmes, PharmD
Pharmacist Practice Leader, Regulatory Compliance

It has been a while since this topic was posted here.

What safeguards is your institution employing to enhance safety when topical epinephrine is used for ENT cases?

Are you repackaging epinephrine in a pour bottle? If yes, what sterile container are you using for that repackaging?