Reducing dose omission of prescribed medications in the hospital setting: a narrative review

Impact of Dispense Tracking Software on Inpatient Pharmacy Operations

Background: When medications dispensed from a hospital inpatient pharmacy aren't able to be found at their intended destination (ie, a missing dose), this can result in delayed medication administration and rework to redispense the medication. Technology advancements in the medication use process have led to development of dose-tracking software that has the capability to track medication doses throughout the medication use cycle and document a medication's location to its destination. Objective: The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of dose-tracking software on the number of inpatient pharmacy redispenses and nursing requests for missing medications. Secondary objectives included pharmacy staff satisfaction with dose-tracking software, its impact on workflow and patient safety, and compliance with dose-track scanning. Methods: The study design was a prospective, pre-post implementation to compare the requests for missing doses and associated dispenses of injectable medications during the set evaluation period. Dose-track scanning compliance data was collected and evaluated. A survey was also administered to staff to evaluate employee perception and satisfaction with usability and value of the software. Results: During the preimplementation period, 40 021 injectable doses were dispensed, and 9841 (24.6%) were documented as redispensed doses. After dose-tracking implementation, 42 975 total injectable doses were dispensed with 9839 (22.9%) being redispensed. The count of medication messages was 10 661 in the preperiod and 11 475 in the postperiod. The data were normalized using case mix index (CMI) and patient days to account for variation in severity of illness. Conclusion: Implementation of dose-tracking software showed a decrease in the percentage of redispensed injectable medications.

Improving the supply of critical medicines from pharmacy to reduce the delay in medicines administration on wards

It is nationally and locally recognised that doses of critical medications are missed or omitted on a daily basis. This has been highlighted by a National Patient Safety Agency alert published in 2010. Since then Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trusthas introduced initiatives to tackle this problem, but there are clear indications that further work is still required. The aim of this service improvement project was to improve the availability of critical medications on the ward to ensure they are available thirty minutes prior to the next scheduled dose.Two plan-do-study-act cycles were undertaken over a 14-day period (January/February 2020) to reduce the time taken for critical medications to be supplied to the ward after a request was placed on the eOrdering system, on one care of the elderly ward. Medication request and prescription tracking data were captured during working hours each week (Monday to Sunday) and examined. The time taken for a request to be processed was captured.Following the introduction of a critical medicines checklist in the pharmacy dispensary and later a flow chart on the ward, availability of critical medication on the ward rose from 89% to 93%. However, the project did not meet the project aim of ensuring 95% of critical medications requested were available on the ward.The project highlighted that for sustainable and robust improvement, the electronic prescribing system required improvement rather than change in the work processes of the ward and pharmacy professionals.

Prevalence, nature and predictors of omitted medication doses in mental health hospitals: A multi-centre study

Objective

Limited evidence concerning the burden and predictors of omitted medication doses within mental health hospitals could severely limit improvement efforts in this specialist setting. This study aimed to determine the prevalence, nature and predictors of omitted medication doses affecting hospital inpatients in two English National Health Service (NHS) mental health trusts.

Methods

Over 6 data collection days trained pharmacy teams screened inpatient prescription charts for scheduled and omitted medication doses within 27 adult and elderly wards across 9 psychiatric hospitals. Data were collected for inpatients admitted up to two weeks prior to each data collection day. Omitted doses were classified as ‘time critical’ and ‘preventable’ based on established criteria. Omitted dose frequencies were presented with 95% confidence intervals (CI). Multilevel logistic regression analyses determined the predictors of omitted dose occurrence, with omission risks presented as adjusted odds ratios (OR) with 95% CI.

Results

18,664 scheduled medication doses were screened for 444 inpatients and 2,717 omissions were identified, resulting in a rate of 14.6% (95% CI 14.1–15.1). The rate of ‘time critical’ omitted doses was 19.3% (95% CI 16.3–22.6%). ‘Preventable’ omitted doses comprised one third of all omissions (34.5%, 930/2694). Logistic regression analysis revealed that medicines affecting the central nervous system were 55% less likely to be omitted compared to all other medication classes (9.9% vs. 18.8%, OR 0.45 (0.40–0.52)) and that scheduled doses administered using non-oral routes were more likely to be omitted compared the oral route (inhaled OR 3.47 (2.64–4.57), topical 2.71 (2.11–3.46), ‘other’ 2.15 (1.19–3.90)). ‘Preventable’ dose omissions were more than twice as likely to occur for ‘time critical’ medications than non-time critical medications (50.4% vs. 33.8%, OR 2.24 (1.22–4.11)).

Conclusions

Omitted medication doses occur commonly in mental health hospitals with ‘preventable’ omissions a key contributor to this burden. Important targets for remedial intervention have been identified.

Evaluating the implementation and impact of a pharmacy technician-supported medicines administration service designed to reduce omitted doses in hospitals: a qualitative study

BACKGROUND

Of the various types of medication administration error that occur in hospitals, dose omissions are consistently reported as among the most common. It has been suggested that greater involvement from pharmacy teams could help address this problem. A pilot service, called pharmacy TECHnician supported MEDicines administration (TECHMED), was introduced in an English NHS hospital for a four-week period in order to reduce preventable medication dose omissions. The objective of this study was to evaluate the implementation, delivery and impact of the pilot TECHMED service using qualitative methods.

METHODS

Semi-structured interviews with pharmacy technicians, nursing staff and senior management involved with the pilot service were undertaken to evaluate TECHMED. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using the framework approach, guided by Weiss's Theory Based Evaluation model.

RESULTS

Twenty-two stakeholder interviews were conducted with 10 ward-based pharmacy technicians, nine nurses and three members of senior management. Most technicians performed a range of activities in line with the service specification, including locating drugs from a variety of sources, and identified situations where they had prevented missing doses. Nurses reported positive impacts of TECHMED on workload. However, not all technicians fully adhered to the service specification in regard to directly following nursing staff during each medication round, citing reasons related to productivity or perceived intrusiveness towards nursing staff. Some participants also reported a perceived lack of impact of TECHMED on medicine omissions. Seventeen of the 22 interviewees supported an extension of the service. There were however, concerns about the impact on technician workload and some participants advocated support for targeted service extension to wards/rounds with high schedule dose volumes and omitted dose rates.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings of this study suggest that the implementation of a pharmacy technician-supported medicines administration scheme to reduce omitted doses may be acceptable to staff in an NHS hospital, and that issues with service fidelity, staff resource/capacity and perceived interventions to avoid dose omissions have important implications for the feasibility of extending the service. The study has identified targets for future development in relation to individual and system factors to improve operationalisation of technician-led initiatives to reduce medicines omissions.