Flowchart for Inpatient Medication Administration Research

Flowchart for Inpatient Medication Administration
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Flowchart for Inpatient Medication Administration
Introduction
The medication administration process has a direct impact on the patient’s health and well-being. The evaluation of the medication administration workflow is crucial to ensure that the right procedure is utilized to offer quality care. The proper design of the process makes sure that there is provision of safe, efficient, prompt, and patient-centered care. Also, there is the elimination of cases of medication administration errors in hospitals through the appropriate workflow design. The application of technological elements in the process with proper integration serves to enhance the efficiency (Duffy, 2011). The prepared flowchart depicts the steps in medication administration with the technology used and the people that perform the different duties. The comprehension of these aspects helps in identifying areas that require improvement to enhance the administrative and clinical performance. The text presents a discussion of the procedures and those that undertake them, the technology utilized, rules and policies, workflow metric, and areas of improvement.
Process Explanation and Technologies Used
The medication administration process encompasses the interactions between personnel, technology, environment, and tasks. The flow chart entails order entry, dispensing, arranging, monitoring, recording, and reconciliation. The order entry stage involves a physician electronically noting a patient’s treatment instructions and giving the prescription (Tschannen, Talsma, Reinemeyer, Belt & Schoville, 2011). The technology utilized in this case is the Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) that reduces prescription errors in medication process and ensures timely communication to other medical staff. The necessary information in this phase is the laboratory tests, patient’s explanation, and details from Electronic Health Records if they exist. The pharmacy staff and caregivers can get information concerning dosage and right routes from the CPOE.
The delivery entails the dispatching of medicine after the release and confirmation at the medication. The nurses and the pharmacist are involved in the process. The Pharmacy Dispensing Systems are used in ensuring accuracy in the medication delivery. The systems incorporate automated dispensing cabinets and drug-dispensing robots in packaging, dispatching, and bar code recognition. The tool utilizes the description information obtained from the CPOE. The integration of this with the Bar-Coded Medication Administration (BCMA) makes sure that the right medicine, dose, and the route is given at the desired time and to the right person. According to Agrawal (2009), the nurses utilize the BMCA by scanning the identification bracelet of the patient to ensure that no errors occur during medication administration. As a result, the caregivers can monitor and get awareness of any misallocation of medicine, wrong routes, dose, timing, and medication.
The recording and reconciliation are done at each step by pharmacists, physicians, doctors, and other staff. The Electronic Heath Record (EHR) is used to store the inf...