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PATIENT SAFETY INITIATIVE: MEDICATION ADMINISTRATION CROSS CHECK.
Presented by: Dr. Sabina Braithwaite, EMS System Medical Director.
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The Office of the Medical Director in partnership with Sedgwick County EMS would like to share a unique initiative we have developed to improve patient safety.
Awareness of safety in emergency medical services is increasing significantly, most recently with the development of the National EMS Culture of Safety Strategy. Provider safety, community safety, and patient safety are the domains being addressed within this strategy. The Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) report, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System, noted that medication-related errors are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality.
Through our provider credentialing process we identified an opportunity for a system level improvement in the area of patient safety, specifically the need to assure that medications are consistently correctly administered to patients we serve in the unique EMS environment. It was clear that there was no consistent approach to assuring the classic “5 rights” of medication administration: right patient, right medication, right dose, right time, right route. More current thinking from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Institute for Safe Medication Practices and other leaders have shown this method to be ineffective at preventing medication error as it provides no specific process.
Rather than continuing to remediate individuals or hold them responsible when no process or procedure exists, we chose a systems approach. We designed the Medication Administration Cross Check specifically for use in the EMS environment. This process has been presented at two national meetings this year (the National Association of EMS Physicians and the US Metropolitan Medical Directors Consortium Gathering of Eagles) and has garnered a considerable following across the country and even...
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