Submitted by Harjender Walia , clinical educator nursing, VA Medication Safety Committee
Medications must be properly administered to benefit the patient. The latest VA Medication Safety bulletins address two situations in which caregivers need to take extra care to avoid potential errors: telephone and verbal medication orders.
Telephone and verbal medication orders
Telephone and verbal medication orders can be misheard, misinterpreted and/or mistranscribed. Only use them when absolutely necessary. They are not acceptable at any time for chemotherapy drugs.
By following a list of safe practice tips in those situations where telephone or verbal orders are necessary, staff can greatly reduce the opportunity for error. For example, using generic drug names, avoiding abbreviations, reading back what you’ve heard and other process steps will ensure patients get the medications they need.
The full list of tips is included in VA Medication Safety Committee Bulleting #6, which should be posted on your units, and is also available online in the bulletin archive.
With so many new medications introduced in recent years, many medication names within the same therapeutic group look and sound the same. Caregivers need to take extra care when reading medication labels and interpreting written orders.
The new height in safety: Use upper case or “tall man” lettering for look-alike drug names.
Think tall to keep safe
To help reduce the risk of error, we now use “tall man lettering.” Essentially, tall man lettering means using upper case letters to highlight the main dissimilarities in look-alike drug names so they are visually different – for example, dimenhyDRINATE and diphenhydrAMINE.
Vancouver Acute is now using tall man lettering on labels for personal prescriptions, unit-dose packaged medications, ward stock medication shelves on the units and mediation shelves in the pharmacy. It is also used in medication administration records, pre-printed orders, Omnicell machines and newsletters.
You can see other examples of medication names using tall man lettering in Bulletin #7, on your unit or online.
Learn more about medication safety
With Accreditation Canada surveyors visiting Vancouver this coming November, we are using our VA Medication Safety bulletins to reinforce practices that are already in place. Like Accreditation, they’re what we do every day.