Web site spotlight: Patient photos help reduce hospital’s medication errors
Nurse Leader Weekly, December 28, 2009
Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Nurse Leader Weekly!
When a new patient enters a hospital, staff members generally follow the same routine. The admitting nurse asks the patient's name, date of birth, symptoms, and any allergies to medications. From this information, a medical record is created and the patient may be admitted and is taken to a room.
However, at JPS Health Network in Fort Worth, TX, there is one extra step for admitting nurses in the Department of Psychiatry: photographing new patients.
This extra step was implemented in early 2006 when Allison Mason, RN, BS, MHA, program manager in the Department of Psychiatry at JPS, attended a monthly performance improvement review regarding medication errors.
After a medication error occurred on the adult inpatient unit resulting from the misidentification of a patient, Mason and the committee reviewed other patient identification practices on various units within the hospital's psychiatry department.
Editor’s note: To read the rest of this article, visit “Patient photos help reduce hospital's medication errors” at www.StrategiesForNurseManagers.com.
Do you need continuing education (CE) credits? Check out this month’s CE article to learn about stroke education for patient care technicians or visit our archives and view a compilation of CE articles (marked with an asterisk).
Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Nurse Leader Weekly!
Related Products
-
Strategies for Nurse Managers
Strategies for Nurse Managers is a 12-page monthly how-to newsletter that was created exclusively to help you save time...
-
Strengthening Nurse-to-Nurse Relationships:
This educational video will help nurses at all levels understand the issue of horizontal hostility. It provides the expert...
-
The Essential Guide to Therapy Management:
This book and CD-ROM set will help increase your effectiveness with practical tools and strategies you can put to use...
-
Quality Improvement for Nurse Managers:
This book and CD-ROM clearly outline a nurse leader's role in quality improvement and offer simple instructions to improve...
-
Agency Start Up Kit
From staff training to clinical documentation best practices, build a concrete foundation to operate efficiently...
Most Popular
- Articles
-
- Featured blog post: Nurses face felony charges after reporting physician to the Texas Medical Board
- Q/A: Volume requirement for reporting hydration services
- Topic: CMS, OESS post new security compliance review information, checklist
- HIPAA Q&A: Answering service messages
- News and briefs: Oklahoma Osteopathic Association against residency bill change
- What does case-mix index mean to you?
- QA:Coding multiple initial infusions
- Catch up on what's new with injections and infusions
- Capturing all necessary codes for IUD insertion and removal can be challenging
- OB services: Coding inside and outside of the package
- E-mailed
-
- Featured blog post: Nurses face felony charges after reporting physician to the Texas Medical Board
- Q/A: Volume requirement for reporting hydration services
- Are your workforce members texting PHI?
- Avoid the trap of probable diagnoses
- Arkansas woman convicted for HIPAA violation
- Q&A: Coding 'aspiration without pneumonia'
- Q&A tackles coding questions about injections and infusions
- New conflicts of interest create new challenges
- Joint Commission Center announces handoff communication solutions
- Inside best practice: Reduce patient falls with a stoplight
- Searched