Ensuring Medication Accuracy: A Comprehensive Guide for Pharmacists
Pharmacists play a critical role in the medication workflow, particularly in ensuring the accuracy of medication doses during the dispensing process. Distinct safeguard mechanisms are in place to minimize the risk of errors, thereby enhancing patient safety.
Introduction to Medication Dosage Verification
With an extensive knowledge of drugs and their appropriate dosages, pharmacists are equipped to handle a vast array of medications. However, it is impossible for any professional to know everything. Hence, rigorous safeguards are implemented to maintain accuracy. During the final verification stage, the prescription dispensing system alerts pharmacists if the dosage does not seem correct.
UK Practice: Layered Verification Systems
In the UK, the process ensures that prescriptions are verified by multiple personnel, reducing the risk of errors. This system follows several steps:
Initial Prescription Handling
The prescription is initially handed over to a local pharmacy from the doctor's surgery, often through paper or email. The pharmacist who is qualified reviews the prescription for any obvious mistakes. Upon completion, the prescription is passed to a staff member who extracts the necessary drugs from the stock and ensures any shortages are replenished from wholesalers. The packets are signed to acknowledge the correctness of the transaction.
Second-Level Verification
A completely different person re-checks the prescription to ensure it matches the picked drug packets and initials the labels to confirm the accuracy. This is especially important because a generic drug may have a different name than that written on the prescription by the doctor. The doctor may specify that only the named drug must be provided, but generally, a generic can be issued.
Final Packaging and Labeling
The drugs are then packed into a paper bag, labeled, and prepared for collection. This rigorous process involves three checks on the dosages of the drugs supplied. Despite the meticulous system, human error can still occur. However, in the last two years, only one error has been reported in my experience.
Pharmacy Example: Contemporary Verification Processes
At the last pharmacy I worked at, a new prescription would arrive at the window and be typed in by a licensed pharmacy technician. The typed version is cross-checked against the hard copy original prescription. Then, the prescription is sent to another technician who scans the bar code on the stock bottle of medication, ensuring it matches exactly.
Triple Verification Steps
The counted and labeled pills are then passed to another pharmacist for verification. The original typed version of the prescription label is cross-checked, and the pills are compared to a photograph in the computer. Once everything checks out, the prescription is ready to be dispensed to the patient. This stringent multi-step process ensures the highest level of accuracy in medication dispensing.
Conclusion and Future Directions
Pharmacy practices have evolved to implement comprehensive check systems to ensure medication accuracy. By following these meticulous processes, pharmacists can significantly reduce the risk of dispensing errors, thereby enhancing patient safety. As technology continues to advance, it is likely that further improvements will be made to these systems, ensuring even higher levels of accuracy in medication dispensing.