Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.
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takes during drug administration. A barcode scan- ning system with an auditory component can pro- vide an extra sense of security against the subcon- scious brain taking over. When you sweep the bar- code on a medication label, and see and hear the drug's name, a second sense is involved. Your sub- conscious brain could potentially override a visual cue, but the auditory component provides a backup of sorts. "Activating two senses is like having two people double-checking your work," says Dr. Wahr. Dr. Abernathy points out prefilled syringes streamline the workload of anesthesia providers, who can therefore spend more time focusing on patient care. "The less medica- tion prep you have to do, the more attention you pay to the case, and the less likely you are to make a mistake," he says. If you spend a lot of time draw- ing up, reconstituting and diluting drugs, while also caring for patients, you're increas- ing your cognitive workload. "If all you have to do is grab a prefilled syringe, all of that work is already done for you, so your cognitive load goes way down," says Dr. Abernathy. "Your opportunities for error go down as well." Having to draw up five or six syringes for each case takes several minutes, and eats into OR turnover times. Anesthesia providers who don't want to keep busy surgeons waiting might rush to get syringes ready, and accidentally skip a crucial step in the medication preparation process. "We don't know how to teach our subconscious brain to not make mistakes," says Dr. Wahr. "Telling providers to try harder or to focus more doesn't work. We need stronger inter- ventions, and certainly prefilled syringes is one of them." Many anesthesia providers love prefilled syringes because they make their jobs a bit easier, says Dr. Abernathy. When they're under a time crunch to get medications ready for the next case, they simply open a drawer on the anesthesia cart and grab the needed syringes. That eliminates having to open numerous vials, draw medica- tions into syringes and label them all correctly. Ultimately, prefilled syringes help to reduce the human factor in medication errors, keep patients safer and providers hap- pier, which, in a time of such stress and uncertainty, are invaluable benefits. OSM 6 2 • O U T P A T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 0 Helping you deliver better medicine to more people. With increasing regulatory pressure and drug shortages, access to quality medicine is more important than ever. Leiters is an FDA-registered 503B outsourcing provider of high-quality, compounded sterile preparations including: Pre-filled syringes, IV bags and vials ON-Q* Pain Relief System fill services Opioid-free surgical pain services medications Ophthalmology medications and services including FDA-compliant repackaged Avastin® ON-Q* is a registered trademark of Avanos Medical, Inc., or its affiliates. Avastin® is a registered trademark of Genentech, Inc. COMPOUNDING HEALTH™ www.leiters.com | 800.292.6772 Prefilled syringes are ready to administer and eliminate the risk of substitution and swap errors.