Authors (including presenting author) :
Hor CK(1), Chan WYM(1), Mak CK(1), Ma WS(2), Ng WY(3) , Lo WC (2)(3), Szeto L (2)(3)
Affiliation :
(1) Department of Pharmacy, Tseung Kwan O Hospital (2) Anaesthesia & Operating Theatre Services, Tseung Kwan O Hospital, (3) Ambulatory Surgery Services, Tseung Kwan O Hospital
Introduction :
Safe medication use and minimizing medication incidents due to known drug allergy are utmost important in patient care. However, Clinical Management System (CMS) allergy checking was not utilized in the workflow of Operating Theater (OT). In a conventional cabinet, all Dangerous Drugs (DD) could be retrieved once the cabinet is opened. Moreover, DD picking, maintaining DD ledger before, during and after each operation and DD ordering are time consuming and involve manual selection, calculation and transcription. Installation of Smart Cabinet (SC) could be a solution for these problems.
Objectives :
1. Improve medication safety in DD allergy checking, picking and transcription 2. Improve security in storing DD 3. Enhance efficiency by using automated electronic DD ledger and electronic G.F. 277
Methodology :
Omnicell smart cabinet was sourced and installed in Tseung Kwan O Hospital OT in 2019. Number of DD cabinets were reduced from 5 conventional cabinets to 1 SC and 1 conventional stand-by cabinet. The SC was programmed to perform a drug allergy checking step before retrieving DD. All DDs are placed in individual cells with guiding light so nurses could only retrieve the correct DD, thus promoting medication safety and security. Necessary information was programmed to be automatically entered into electronic DD ledger whenever nurses retrieve a DD for a patient or replenish a DD using electronic G.F. 277. The SC could also automatically calculate the number of DD to be replenished and automatically generate an electronic G.F. 277 for DD ordering, therefore enhancing efficiency.
Result & Outcome :
Smart cabinet could provide an extra allergy checking step and guiding light to individual DD storage cells. No manual calculation nor transcribing are needed for DD ordering using electronic G.F. 277. It helps to track the movement of drugs and offer a more secure inventory system. Nurses in OT agree that using SC is safer and more secured. It is believed that efficiency could be further enhanced when electronic DD ledger is implemented in the near future.
