The Advantages and Disadvantages of Bar Code Scanning in Medication Administration

Drug errors are the major cause of morbidity and preventable mortality in hospitals (Adams). Indeed, about 5 million Americans are injured each year due to mistakes in hospital medicine (Foote). Mistakes in medicine are not only harmful to patients but also mistakes in medicine at hospitals are very expensive. Medical malpractice puts a $ 5 billion annual cost on the US health care system (Foote). If one of the five drug management rights is omitted, drug management error will occur.

Technologies such as Intelligent Pumps and Barcode-Assisted Drug Management (BCMA) help reduce dosage errors when properly used. Nurses using BCMA will scan the patient's wristband and medication code before giving medication. In one study, BCMA reduced incorrect dose error by 90.4%, drug management error by 80.7% and prescription drug shortage by 72.4%. An alarm will be issued when the dose falls out of range 15, 18 Manrique - Rodriguez et al. The advantage of using intravenous administration was investigated. Intelligent pump 18 for pediatric ICU patients totaling 624,252 injections began and 486,875 drugs were prepared through the Smart Pump Drug Library. The compliance of user security software is 78%. The use of a smart pumping device resulted in the interception of 92 programming errors; 84% of these medications were used for pain, sedation, heart disease and infectious diseases

Management - electronic medical records (eMAR) implements a combination of bar code verification technology and eMAR to further reduce management errors. The eMAR system electronically receives patient profile information from the pharmacy system. This process reduces transcription errors as nurses and unit secretaries no longer have to write orders. On the bedside, you can check patient identity, medication, dosage and administration time in real time by automatically checking the medications scanned according to the patient's eMAR profile by barcode / eMAR. At the same time, pharmacy barcode scanning and hospital ward barcodes / eMAR systems can improve drug safety by reducing sequence errors.

Karen Fumara, Pharmacopoeia. Pharmaceutical safety officer at Brigham and Massachusetts State Boston Women's Hospital

At the bedside of the patient, the nurse scans the patient and drug barcodes before medication. The patient's wristband barcode will access the patient's electronic medical record (EHR) and confirm the order for the medication. (The patient's wristband and EHR can also include information on allergies, drug interactions, repeated treatments, and potential dosage errors.) A nurse was created by "five rights" verification Check the warnings to determine if further action is required before proceeding. Countermeasure Once he or she completes medication management, each action is recorded and data is added to the patient's EHR. All of this greatly reduces the risk of providing wrong medications or doses to patients.