| Abstract: | In the hospital, nursing staffs are supposed to be in charge of distributing medicines to the patients. However, due to the rapid development of the media interests, in the hospital recently, injection mistakes and incorrect medicines distribution cases are continuously reported to public. Those cases reported by the media are just the tip of the iceberg. How to avoid this kind of negligence-happening frequency is the most urgent issue to us right now.
Incorrect medicine distributions mostly occur in the following situations:
1. Mistake of patient identification.
2. Forget to give the medicine to the patient or give at the wrong time.
3. Patient’s healing curve doesn’t react to nursing staffs immediately.
In the past, nursing staffs distributing medicines to the patient only do few steps of double checking before taking the action. However, due to the medical environment in Taiwan, one nurse has to take care of several patients at the same time. Therefore, It is very urgent to develop a more convenient, efficient and accurate medicine distribution system to identify patients and check the medicines before giving medicines to the patient. By using the medicine distribution system to assist nursing staffs and double-checking before giving medicines, the chance of mistake will be reduced. Not just only it can help nursing staffs distribute medicines correctly, but also the patients can have no worry about the medicines. At the end, patient will become to the core of relationship of patient and hospital.
In theory, we are to use barcode technology. At the beginning, the patient registers at reception in the hospital and will be tied with a barcode bracelet on their wrist. It is in order to identify the patient before giving the medicines. In the pharmacy of the hospital, pharmacist will label patient’s barcode on the medicine bag and save the information at the hospital patient’s database.
When distributing the medicines, staff will be requested to verify through the staff ID barcode before entering the medical system. The patient’s barcode will be scanned in order to identify, they then select the patient’s medicine schedule and scan the barcode labeled on the medicine bag. Medical system will automatically check the process if it is correct. If not, it will display the message: “incorrect dosage”, “incorrect medicine”, “incorrect medicine distribution”, “patient healing curve has been updated”, “cure medicine has been changed”...and so on. Through the “save medicine distribution system”, it will assist nursing staff to be more efficient if patients have the [accurate dosage] medicine at [accurate time] and the labeling of the [accurate medicine] of [accurate distribution medicine procedure]. |
