I'm aware that this is not the most appropriate list to post this question to,
but having drawn blanks elsewhere added to the fact that most of us work in
hospitals, I thought that I'd give it a try.
I'm trying to conduct an audit into the administration of medicines to hospital
inpatients by nurses. More particularly the appropriate use of codes for the
non-administration of medicines (i.e. nil by mouth, no stock, contra-indicated,
refusal etc....). I'm sure that quite often inappropriate codes are being used
and as a result, patients are not receiving the best possible care (no-stock is
being used when in fact if somebody had bothered to look in the medication
cupboard, instead of seeing the medication trolley as a bottomless pit that can
carry everything and everything, they would have found that it had been
supplied by pharmacy earlier that day!! The most worrying fact being that the
on-call pharmacist is not being consulted to make sure that the medication
omission will not put the patient at risk). I intend to attach a no-blame
policy to my research as I'm aware of the great pressures that nursing staff
are under, just using the results to try improve things in future. I may find
that pharmacy are more at fault than the nursing staff!!!
Has anybody come across any audit material or research like this before?
because the audit units at many major hospitals have not and I'm having trouble
finding any previous research.
Any help would be gratefully received!!!
Thank you in advance,
J. Daniel Mellor
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James Daniel Mellor
Dewsbury District Hospital & University of Bradford
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