ent drugs like fentanyl and
hydromorphone. Even with tall-
man lettering and different drug
names, the syringes look physi-
cally identical — which can
cause confusion if someone is in
a hurry.
6. Barcoding
In order to get the most out of a
lot of these technologies, you
should implement barcoded
tracking of all your medications. There are many ways that barcoding
can help your facility increase its safety standards. On the medication
administration side, scanning barcoded medications and barcoded
patient ID bracelets helps ensure you're giving the right drug to the
right patient at the right time. A barcoding tracking system can also
be set up with alerts that let you know if, for example, you're about to
administer a medication at the wrong time.
In the future, barcoding will help reduce errors when smart pumps
are integrated with EMRs. In this scenario, the patient, IV medication
and smart pump will be scanned to populate the fields of the pump
with the infusion parameters instead of you having to manually pro-
gram the parameters.
OSM
A P R I L 2 0 1 8 • O U T PA T I E N TS U R G E R Y. N E T • 9 5
Newer drug disposal
systems destroy excess
drugs and render
them unusable, which
prevents staff
members from
diverting drug waste
for illicit purposes.
