Barcode Medication Administration (BCA)

INTRODUCTION Pharmaceutical error refers to any unintended error in prescribing, dispensing or administering a medicinal product in control of health care professional. Drug use is a very complex process and there are drug related challenges at different levels, involving prescribers, pharmacists and patients. Medication errors can occur anytime, anywhere in the health care system from prescriber to dispense to administration and lastly to patient use.

There are many errors that can be prevented and pharmacists play vital role in appropriate use of drugs. Medication errors do not always lead to Adverse Drug Reactions (ADRs) but if they do, they may cause harm and are considered preventable. Most medication errors are known as latent errors,

2. Barcode Medication Administration (BCMA)

The recent efforts in order to reduce recurrence of ADEs have focused on eliminating errors in medication dispensing and administration. Barcode Medication Administration software enables users to document electronically the administration of medications at the bedside to improve the accuracy of medication administration.

Nurse carries out barcode scanning at the patient’s bedside to identify the administered medication to assure it is the prescribed medication and dose.

This system is done by placing a barcode on a patient wrist bracelet as identification (ID) badge so that they can assure an identical match between patient and medication and capture the practitioner administering the medication.

3. Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE)

CPOE is an application that enables users to key in medical orders into a computer system that is located within an inpatient setting. CPOE replaces traditional methods of placing medication orders so as to reduce errors in prescribing

Automated Medication Dispensing

Automated dispensing is unified medication management system help in removing the time-consuming tasks from the medication process. It enhances the safety and efficiency of the whole complete medication process as well as improving efficiency of nursing and pharmacy staff by cutting down a few manual steps and processes. Automated dispensing of medications will effectively reduce medication errors and the correct dosage will be committed. Package that contains the medication would be wrongly labeled and sometimes the label is unclear. This caused confusion to the health care professionals to dispense the drugs and leads to incorrect medication being dispensed to the particular patient. Dispensing the wrong medication will cause the individual patient to develop allergic reactions or in some cases it might put patients’ lives at risk if there is severe recurrence of adverse drug effects.

5. Smart Infusion Pump

In recent years, "smart" infusion pumps have become increasingly sophisticated and include close error reduction software. The smart pump's "brain" consists of customized software that contains a drug