I wanted to see if anyone is stocking and using syringes that are smaller than 1 mL volume- specifically 1/2 mL. If so, was this decision made to help with accuracy and/or volume errors with a total volume ( TV) less than 1 mL. This question is not geared to the use of TB syringes.

Thanks.
DPatrick

Limiting the number of available drug concentrations is a standard strategy to decrease the potential for error. I am interested in those institutions that do not stock heparin in either the 10,000 and 20,000 unit/mL concentrations. If you have eliminated these high concentrations, what were the barriers you had to overcome? Examples: higher concentrations are need for dialysis machines or needed for SQ prophylactic doses of heparin in bariatric patients.

I was wondering if anyone have develop effective strategies for:

Greetings,

My organization is transitioning to a new EHR (Epic) next year. In the interest of safety, we have opted to have a pharmacist verify essentially all medications except for small specific list in our PACU.

I am worried about the impact this will have to patient care, particularly in the ER, if there is a significant delay to medication availability. I am also hearing of other Epic customers making this choice and then later regretting it.

Do any of you have any relevant experience with not using auto-verification and how that impacted high-volume units?

How do you all handle intraosseous (IO) medication administration? Our policy currently state that the IO catheter can be in place for up to 24 hours. Do you have IO as a route for every medication that can be given IO in your EMR?

Good afternoon,

Due to some unique circumstances with our behavioral health patients, not all patients are willing to wear an arm band. We have implemented photo ID process to verify these patients.

The question has come up about using BCMA on these patients. For example, is it acceptable to attached the patient ID barcode to the photo?

Has anyone else implemented a process similar to this? How does your organization handle the BCMA aspect?

Our event reporting tool is used by three principle stakeholders: Risk management, Performance Improvement, and Medication Safety. When documenting some recent events, we have become aware that the interests of these key stakeholders are sometimes at cross-purposes.

Risk management would like to see clear causation before making an assessment of harm. Their definition is quite conservative with an eye towards the legal risks and discoverability of the event review process. Their driving question tends towards, "Is our institution responsible for causing harm?"

Hello,

We are looking to update our process on Methrotrexate administration for ectopic pregnancy for our ED staff. Would anyone be willing to share their policy or guidelines?

Thanks,
Olga

Does anyone have familiarity with administration of a bladder irrigation via an infusion pump? I was asked about this practice today and in addition to obvious concerns over incorrect route errors, I am thinking that using an infusion pump for administration into the bladder may also be problematic. Any insight as to how others are doing this is appreciated.

Best,
Drew

Hello,
Anyone willing to share rules of thumb or references for the lowest measureable accurate volume your staff is using when preparing medication. Our team has mixed thoughts on this, and since we're a pediatric hospital we often struggle with the cutoff point before having to create a dilution for staff. Also since this is a pediatric hospital, we do have a lot of dilutions which are prepared daily for staff to use.

Thanks.
D.Patrick