Medical Staff Users: Inpatients

Introduction

In the general scheme of things, in-patient prescribing, will be the majority use of a system. In-patient prescribing in this section does not include, cytotoxic prescribing, with the exception of items such as methotrexate for arthritis (although if the hospital operates a strict cytotoxic prescribing procedure, this may not be the case). TPN prescribing comes under its own section.

The most important consideration is access. On a busy ward say 30 beds, 3 drug trollies/teams for nursing and two main consultant teams there will be considerable demand for system hardware. As previously mentioned to realistically satisfy this demand a proportion of this needs to be mobile. The additional requirements are:

System requirements

1. The system must be mobile to allow prescribing at bedside/on ward rounds
2. The system must be able to group patients by Team, prescriber and or ward with a view to precribing/drug entry.
3. There must be a facility to handle PRN medication with a facility to set maximum daily/single dose as well as requirements for medication
4. There must be an online facility that will indicate whether a drug is held in stock on a ward and if not whether it is available in Pharmacy de facto or whether there is no stock available in Pharmacy.
5. There must be a facility to record whether or not a patient is using their own drug(s) so as to avoid an order being sent to Pharmacy. This facility must be able to be switched off in the event of the patient's own drug(s) running out.
6. There must be facilities to review patient medication/medication history by team/bay, prescriber & or ward.
7. There should be easy access to the OCS system to check results if required.

Copyright - Will Willson 1999
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