AuBurn LTC | 2023 Q3 Newsletter

Medication Pass – Best Practices
Consultant pharmacists are noting an uptick in medication errors. With staff turnover and employees new to the long term care field, it is a great time to revisit best practices for medication pass. All-staff meetings and/or random audits by nursing leaders are GREAT opportunities to recap your expectations and general best practices for medication administration. The list below may assist you in this endeavor:

• Please ensure that when staff are passing medications, they are comparing the pharmacy­provided label on the medication card /packaging against the electronic or paper MAR order.
  • If ANY discrepancy is noted, staff should alert nursing to investigate the situation immediately, even if they feel the discrepancy is minor.
  • A discrepancy that makes sense to one staff member may not make sense to another, and could result in a medication error.
• Please ensure that insulin pens remain in the labeled plastic baggies they are dispensed in. Rationale:
  • Infection control tags can result if insulin pens from different patients make contact with one another.
  • The tag on the pen itself is small, and can fall off with repeated use, which would result in the pen being completely unlabeled if no baggie was used.
  • The baggies also have a sticker reminding your staff how long the insulin pen contained therein is stable for once it is removed from the refrigerator and first used (NOTE: This varies by product! Some are 14 days, others 28, others 42, etc. It is important to look at those stickers and the AuBurn Short Date Sheet when trying to determine beyond use dating!)
• Please ensure that you’re consulting the AuBurn Short Date sheets when trying to determine beyond use dating of other products also, including inhaled medications, certain eye drops, hematologic meds, etc. If no information is listed there, consult packaging and/or pharmacy with any questions.

Please remind your entire staff that AuBurn Pharmacy is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. While we don’t want our on-call services to be abused, we also do not want patients to go without a vital medication.

Fall 2023 – Vaccines To Watch For
In addition to the annual influenza vaccine this fall ‘ there is a newly approved vaccine for patients 60 and older to prevent severe disease from the respiratory syncytial (sin-SISH-uhl) virus (RSV), and a new coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) vaccine, targeting the XBB strain, is also expected to be available.

Quote of the Quarter
“Health is like money, we never have a true idea of its value until we lose it.” – Josh Billings