1. Ask for Patient’s Medication History
Most of the times, errors occur in something as simple as the transfer of materials or prescribing errors from the doctors. The best way to overcome such errors is to, first of all, examine and identifying the illness of the patient accurately and asking for their medication history before writing them down a prescription. This lowers the risk of ADEs (adverse drug events. to a huge extent.
2. Write Down the Problems Hand in Hand
When you are examining a patient, you must write down any important notes that you may need afterwards. Reduce your reliability on memory because sometimes it can fail us which can lead to medication errors. Noting down the problems, assessing them before writing a prescription is the best way to avoid medication errors in hospitals.
3. Don’t Mix Up the Names
Prescriptions that have the same names can get mixed up quite often and quite easily. Even similar sounding names can be confusing at times. Being careful with names and asking the patient what disease they want to get treated to can minimize the confusion to some extent. However, the use of name alerts in front of the MAR is the best way to go to avoid confusion at all.
4. Reduce Human Errors
Humans can make errors so can your staff. Increase in workload or alteration of the shifts of the staff can increase the fatigue level. This fatigue results in error from the staff which may lead to medication errors or other errors as well. Adjust work schedules, accordingly, giving enough time for your staff to rest. Reduce the overtime because employees who work overtime are three times more likely to cause an error. Also use appropriate tools like DICOM viewer Mac for accessing and storing data without errors.
5. Hire the Right Staff
While choosing the staff it is important that you hire people with the required abilities and good knowledge of their job. It would be a plus point if they have past experience of the same job so you can judge them on its basis. Moreover, they should also be trained well enough to recognize and come over any medical error.
6. Training the Staff Appropriately
A good staff is more likely to have an impact on your whole organization and increase its efficiency. You must have your employees trained and ready to bear the workload. Train them to identify any negative effects they observe in a patient due to medication. This increases the monitoring of your medications. Any changes to the patient’s vitals should be recorded and reported to a higher doctor to assess. You must also train them to handle any unsafe situation professionally and report to a safety specialist.
7. Store the Medications Properly
Instructions for storage and mentioned on the medications and these instructions should be followed properly. For example; if the medicine is directed to store in a refrigerator then it should be stored there or if any is recommended to store in room temperature then it should be kept there. It is very important to store the medications as per directed in order to maintain their efficacy.
You should also employ the use of a better DICOM viewer free download for less medical data errors. A good DICOM viewer Mac let you view and access it from multiple devices.
