Information systems are very important in the work place. Working in the ER we see people in all conditions. It would be important for patient care to have all patients have some sort of Electronic Health Record (HER).
One of the important areas is medications. “Pharmacy Applications and Systems” (Hebda & Czar, 2009, p. 148) gives great ideas of how medications can be ordered, delivered and administered in an error prevention way. Medications come in many names, colors, dosages, and schedules. When we have a patient with multiple medications, this can be very confusing to both healthcare workers and patients. Having standards in place can cause less errors and better care for our patients.
Reference
As a home health nurse I would usually ask a new patient all the medications he/she is taking. I would be given the pill box. With the myriads of medications that have same sounding names and colors, dosages, etc, it would be impossible to identify all medications correctly (I joke with the patient that I am working on memorizing the meds:looks, colors, dosages, names but has not been successful yet). With EHR, it would be easy to access all their health record including their medications.
ReplyDeleteHi Kim, How are you? I think EHR enhance the feasibility of the multidimensional team members that are involved in a patient's care, especially in the ER. I love the patients' that come into the ER with a nice printed list, but if they just had a identification card (computer chip) like other countries, we would be one step closer to havng continuity of care.
ReplyDelete