Collecting pharmacy data by hand is time-consuming and difficult to analyse and report. What we need is an easy-to-use application for entering data and displaying the data in a clear and concise manner.
Below is a description of all the types of data the application collects:
As an outpatients pharmacy at a hospital, we receive prescriptions from the Outpatients Clinics, Discharge Prescriptions from the wards, Emergency Department prescriptions, Staff prescriptions and prescriptions from other hospitals and GP practices. We also dispense many expensive medicines, which are not readily available at other community pharmacies. This application will help us keep track of where our prescriptions come from, the number of prescriptions (and number of items) we dispense over a period of time and to keep track of a number of specific, high-cost medicines we dispense. It will enable me to present to my manager, a snapshot of our dispensing activities over a period of time. It will also be very useful if I want to present a business plan, e.g. if we want to justify increasing our staff levels.
Prescribing errors are a common cause of morbidity and mortality, both in the community and in hospitals. Pharmacists play an important role in minimizing and preventing these errors, by intervening before the patient receives any harmful medication. These interventions need to be documented in order for pharmacists to:
- Meet professional and accreditation standards
- Illustrate the importance of the role of the pharmacist in patient care (for funding purposes)
- Measure workload
- Provide feedback to prescribers This application will be very useful to illustrate what our job entails and how much time we are spending on these interventions.
A dispensing error is defined as “the deviation from a written prescription that occurs during the dispensing process”. Examples of these may include:
- Dose/item error: where wrong medicine or dose is selected
- Labelling error: medicine correct, but label wrong
- Issue error: medicine issued to the wrong patient or missed out an item
These errors are usually documented as either: NEAR MISS – error made, but picked up and corrected before it is handed out to patient INCIDENT- patient received incorrect medication and potential for harm (whether or not harm results). It is very important to document dispensing errors and this application will be very useful to use as a learning tool. By reflecting on these errors we can try and prevent them by identifying the most likely causes.