BPOC

Bar code-enabled point-of-care technology

Bar code-enabled point-of-care technology

Nurses play a vital role in the medication-use process, ranging from their involvement in the communication of medication orders to the administration of medications.Administration of medications can be a labor-intensive and error-prone process.

Studies show that 38% of medication errors occur during the drug administration process 20% errors occur through doses of medication administered

Medication Error Facts: 7,000 Americans die annually $5.6 million per hospital Pediatric patients experience harmful medication errors three times more often than adults ICU patients suffer more life medication errors than any other patient population

Risk factor for medication errors:*Increase of drugs in the last 10 years

*Staff shortages

*Sound-alikes, look-alikes

One form of technology that will have a great impact on medication safety during the administration process is BPOC Technology.

What is a BAR CODE?

A bar code (often seen as a single word,barcode) is the small image of lines (bars) and spaces that is affixed to retail store items, identification cards, and postal mail to identify a particular product number, person, or location.

The code uses a sequence of vertical bars and spaces to represent numbers and other symbols. A bar code symbol typically consists of five parts: a quiet zone, a start character, data characters (including an optional check character), a stop character, and another quiet zone.

Abarcode readeris used to read the code. The reader uses a laser beam that is sensitive to the reflections from the line and space thickness and variation. The reader translates the reflected light into digital data that is transferred to a computer for immediate action or storage.Symbologyis the "language" of a bar code, and its what the scanner must read. The bar code is a collection of white spaces and lines thatrepresentan item, and that your computer uses to look up the record of information about that item.

JCAHO National Patient Safety Goals:

Number One goal-- Improve the accuracy of patient identification- use at least two patient identifiers (neither to be patients room number) whenever taking blood samples or administering medications or blood productConsumer Awareness

Patient Safety (medication safety, blood transfusion safety, laboratory specimen collection safety)

Bar code technologySeries of vertical lines and spaces that scanner converts to electrical signal understood by computer

Used in grocery stores since 1970s

Can store alpha and numeric and information

Provides accurate, fast, realtime data collection and entry

Offers exceptional security

Minimizes errors associated with manual data entryBar code medication administration technology Nurse barcode scans name tags Nurse barcode scans patient identification bracelet Patient MAR appears on bedside laptop or handheld device Scheduled and PRN meds are scanned Warnings/alerts are issued when indicated Automatic documentation of administration activities

Other levels of functionality include:

increased level of accountability

up-to-date drug reference information from online medication libraries

customizable comments or alerts and reminders of important clinical actions that need to be taken when administering certain medications

monitoring the pharmacy and the nurses response to predetermined rules or standards for the rules engine such as alerts or reminders

reconciliation for pending or STAT orders

capturing data for the purpose of retrospective analysis of aggregate data

verifying blood transfusion and laboratory specimen collection identification

Negative effects of BPOC system: Nurses were sometimes caught off guard by the programmed automated actions taken by the BPOC softwareThe BPOC seemed to inhibit the coordination of patient information between prescribers and nurses when compared to a traditional paper-based system.Nurses find it more difficult to deviate from the routine medication administrative sequence with the BPOC system.Nurses feel that their main priority is the timeliness of medication administration because the BPOC requires nurses to type in an explanation when medications were given even a few minutes late. Nurses use strategies to increase efficiency that circumvented the intended use of BPOC.The following types of error could occur:OmissionsExtra doseWrong drugWrong doseUnauthorized drugCharting errorsWrong dosage form