Education & Training
The Pharmacy Department works collaboratively with UBC to support pharmacy, nursing and physician student teaching both on site and at the university. The department is also significantly involved with postgraduate pharmacy training and ongoing education for pharmacists, nurses and physicians.
Initiatives
The Pharmacy Department is involved in a number of initiatives to improve patient safety and effective medication utilization at the hospital.
Alaris IV Pump Barcode Project
In May 2010, Children's and Women's Hospital (C&W) became the first hospital in Canada to implement the Alaris AutoID Barcode functionality to improve patient safety for those receiving IV medication. A unique 2 dimensional (2D) barcode is utilized to ensure the correct patient receives the correct IV medication at the correct infusion rate using dose checking software specific to C&W.
Non-Interchangeable IV/IT Syringe System
In an effort to increase patient safety, the Pharmacy Department, in collaboration with a team of physicians and designers, has patented a design for a spinal injection safety system (SISS). This spinal injection safety system design makes it mechanically impossible to connect intravenous drug delivery devices to the modified spinal injection system. By redesigning the technical design and making it a unique fitting, the risk of introducing an intravenous medication into the spine and consequently causing significant patient harm is greatly reduced. We anticipate that this system will have application in both the treatment of cancer patients and obstetrics where spinal injection of drugs is most common.
Safe medication practices initiatives
In conjunction with the hospital pharmacy, Therapeutics & Nutrition (PT&N) Committee, and its sub-committee, the Committee for the Promotion of Safe Medication Practices (SMA), the department has begun both individual and inter-disciplinary initiatives to improve medication safety.
Our activities have centred around two broad safety objectives:
- Reduction of medication error potential
- Reduction of harm potential from adverse drug reactions (ADR)
The reduction of medication error potential includes:
- The introduction of technology and automation both in the pharmacy and on the wards. Medication packaging and automated dispensing systems, bar-code technology integrated with one of the highest rated computer systems and the robotic technology to produce IV feeding solutions (Parenteral Nutrition).
- The introduction of recommended safe prescribing practices for physician orders.
- Providing IV medication doses to nurses in a ready-to-use format. This increases patient safety, while allowing the nurse to provide more support to the patients' needs.
Reduction of harm potential from adverse drug reactions (ADR) includes:
- Collaboration in an adverse drug reaction reporting strategy with the Pharmaceutical Outcomes Group. Data collected from this initiative will enable integration of preventative rules into the pharmacy information system.
