Medical Staff Users: Discharge Prescriptions (TTA) and weekend leave(WL)

Introduction

The prescription of discharge orders must be straightforward, in that all the information should be on the system prior to a discharge prescription being required. This being the case it is easy to see how a great deal of wasted time and propensity for errors may be avoided.

Additional System Requirements

  1. At the point of discharge the system must be able to convert a current inpatient prescription into a TTA or WL.The duration for TTAs will be able to be set in accordance with the Trust's policy, though there should be an override facility. WL will require/record, the time of discharge & time of return. The system will then work out which medications need to be administered (& therefore dispensed) for that time.
  2. There must be a facility to add new, i.e. previously unprescribed during in-patient stay, drugs to a discharge order.
  3. The system would include PRN medications by exception only on a discharge order.
  4. The system will take account of patient own drugs when creating the discharge order for dispensing by Pharmacy.
  5. The system will have a discharge letter facility which should be incorporated into the Trust's PMS system
  6. The system must have a facility to include time of discharge on the prescription transmitted to Pharmacy
  7. The system must have the facility to record the priority of a discharge prescription (e.g. Urgent, normal, non-urgent) which may be manually entered or calculated from the difference between discharge time and time of transmission to Pharmacy. This function would be user defined.
  8. The system must recognise the legal requirements for prescribing controlled drugs.
  9. The system must allow for review and subsequent amendments of TTA prescriptions upto the time of processing/validation by Pharmacy.
  10. The system must notify prescribers when Pharmacy is closed so that urgent TTAs can be processed by the resident pharmacist
  11. The system must have the facility to print a hard copy of the prescription if required.

Please feel free to E-mail me any comments/contributions or questions

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Medical Users: Cytotoxic Orders

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Copyright - Will Willson 1999
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