Improve Accuracy and Efficiency of Medication Administration
To avoid the incidence of errors, health care providers need to make sure every time the right medication and treatment is given to the right patient, in the right dose, at the right time and through the right route of administration. However, since the medication and treatment administration is a complex multi step process that encompasses prescribing, transcribing, dispensing, administering and monitoring patient response, the error might happen at any step, and sometimes it is inevitable since all the processes are operated manually. To reduce errors during administration, many technological solutions have been developed, and among them, barcode and RFID technology have been proved as a promising approach to prevent medication errors. A study conducted in 2010 found that barcode usage prevented about 90000 serious medical errors each year and reduced mortality rate by 20%.
How does barcode / RFID technology improve the medication administration exactly?
Before starting the care, nurse can check all the pending orders on their handheld computers. (All the orders are accepted directly from the physician order entry system.) When a patient is due for a medication, the nurse opens the corresponding patient information. page to check the details and requirements of that order. All the information, including the patient’s name, bed number, medication name, strength and dosage, route and dose frequency, will be clearly displayed. Nurse can do the dispensing accordingly, with an improved efficiency, and a higher accuracy. At the bedside, scan the patient’s wristband (Barcode or RFID) and scan the barcode label on every single medication dose or infusion bottle. If the dose being scanned corresponds to an approved medication order and patient is due for this dose, then the nurse can proceed to administer the medication or injection, otherwise the application will issue a warning and stop the process. This step can effectively prevent medication errors and ensure each medication and treatment are given to the exactly right patient. During the administration, all the information, including the time and status of the implementation, the drugs have been taken, and who administered the medication will all be automatically documented, and transferred to the backstage system simultaneously, so nurse do not need to record that information each time manually. This brings more convenience, accountability and effectively avoids the possibility of human error during recording.
Enable Convenient and Real-time Collection of Patient Vital Signs
In the field of healthcare, keeping patient vital signs taken as efficient and well-managed as possible is of utmost importance. The traditional manual collection requires nurses to record the vital sign data on paper, move to the next room to complete the same process again and then transcribe all patient data to the computer, which not only subjects nurses to an inefficient process of duplicating documentation for each patient but also cannot realize real-time information collection healthcare sector deserves. The deployment of mobile medical cart may solve the above problems, but it’s too heavy and quite inconvenient to carry. The proposed Chainway solution integrated barcode or RFID technology is more effective and safer, which avoids duplicating documentation, realizes real-time information collection, also, the handheld computer is as light as a phone. Its pocketable size enables the nurses to carry it anywhere they need, easily and conveniently.
How dose barcode / RFID technology facilitates the collection of vital signs data exactly?
Chainway mobile nursing system is expected to be a solution for the speedy and accurate data input. Health care providers first carry the handheld computer to take the patient vital signs, such as temperature, pulse, respiration, blood pressure, etc., enabling nurses to take and chart patient vitals at the bedside, eliminating the need for manual transcription. It is a step toward new generation of point of nursing care systems where scanners (barcode / RFID) take over the tasks of data input from the nurses. Then vital sign data is automatically transcribed directly into the backstage system from the point of care, which halves the times for vital signs input and relieves nurses from input tasks. What is worth mentioning is that nurses can choose the data instead of inputting manually, which optimizes patient vital sign documentation and eliminates input errors. In this way, the system can generate statistical statements about patient temperature, pulse, respiration, blood pressure, and so on. Chainway PDA offer real-time, accurate and secure information presentation, ensuring that healthcare providers can view and retrieve the vital sign data and charts as well as medical care records via a touch-screen display wherever they are and whenever they need it. The solution allowed nurses to have access to electronic health information throughout the patient journey, from admissions to discharge, enabling the best possible patient outcomes.
To Be Continue in next post………………………..
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