Infusion safety at your fingertips: Solutions to effectively reduce medication error

2023-02-16

Patient safety
Department management
Infusion therapy
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Advancement of biochemistry and healthcare in the past few decades has brought significant improvement in clinical therapies. The greater potential of medication error associated with increased therapeutic complications, however, has also come to be recognized as one of the leading concerns in health care systems.

 

  • 19% of all injuries of hospitalized patients are caused by Adverse Drug Events (ADEs) [1]
  • 50% of ADEs are preventable events result from a medication error [2]

 

Infusion therapy, with a direct, fast impact on human bodies and a high requirement of precision, is among the most prone to medication errors. These errors are often associated with human factors, especially when the staff shortages and fatigue become more striking throughout the prescribing, transcribing, dispensing, administration and monitoring phases.

 

  • 56% of all medication errors are associated with IV medications [3]

Medication errors of does administration by type [4]

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Safe Operation at Ease: Visible, Customizable and Intelligent

SafeDose™ Drug Library Management Tool

To better support the high-intensity work of nurses, Mindray’s SafeDose™ Drug Library Management tool adopt intuitive and intelligent solutions that help caregivers to profile drugs with higher precision and cut the potential human-based errors:

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  • Color-coding system using bright color blocks for clinicians to easily select and verify the correct drug. More than 30 differentiated color labels for clear categorization, with special colors highlighting narcotics, high-risk drugs.
  • Dedicated drug library development that supports the storage of more than 5,000 drug types and their categorization.
  • Automatic parameter fill-in ensures medication safety and improves clinical efficiency.
  • Specialized DERS mechanism helps to reduce drug errors by preventing users from exceeding pre-set hard limits, and by requiring confirmation to override soft limits.
Departmental drug management solution

With infusion pumps entering into wider applications in different departments, fixed medication types of conventional pump face great challenges in addressing the highly differentiated requirement of drug regimens. Mindray’s latest BeneFusion series infusion systems support customized and personalized dose management that optimizes the infusion therapies and guarantees high-level infusion performance.

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  • Departmental drug library provides specialty-based drug library and supports continuous optimization of infusion protocol.
  • Specialized infusion modes enable Rhythm Dose™ (for Chemotherapy Infusion), Target Control Infusion (TCI) mode, Total Intravenous Anaesthesia (TIVA) mode and other flexible drug administration modes according to patient’s conditions to optimize medication effectiveness and reduce side effects.

References
[1] Leape LL, Brennan TA, Laird N, Lawthers AG, Localio AR, Barnes BA, Hebert L, Newhouse JP, Weiler PC, Hiatt H. The nature of adverse events in hospitalized patients. Results of the Harvard Medical Practice Study II. N Engl J Med. 1991 Feb 7;324(6):377-84.
[2] Patient Safety Network. (n.d.). Medication errors and adverse drug events. Patient Safety Network. Retrieved January 5, 2023, from https://psnet.ahrq.gov/primer/medication-errors-and-adverse-drug-events
[3] Ross, L. M., Wallace, J., & Paton, J. Y. (2000). Medication errors in a paediatric teaching hospital in the UK: five years operational experience. Archives of disease in childhood, 83(6), 492-497.
[4] Barker KN, Flynn EA, Pepper GA, Bates DW, Mikeal RL. Medication Errors Observed in 36 Health Care Facilities. Arch Intern Med. 2002;162(16):1897–1903.