Medication error prevention is an essential element within any medication use process. Barcode point-of-care (BPOC) systems are an effective tool to decrease medication errors at the point of medication administration to the patient. BPOC was implemented at Sacred Heart Medical Center (SHMC) as part of an overall medication safety plan. To maximize the safety features of the BPOC system, SHMC determined it was imperative that unit dose medications be barcoded and that nurses scan the medication's barcode prior to administration to the patient. Before the BPOC system was implemented only 35% of medications could be obtained from the wholesaler with a barcode. SHMC dedicated resources to ensure that greater than 95% of all medications are barcoded and that the barcode is recognized by the BPOC system. Additionally, after house-wide implementation, nursing barcode-scanning compliance was only 46%. By ensuring medications were barcoded and providing additional nursing education, barcode scanning compliance increased to 94%. The overall goal of decreasing medication errors at Sacred Heart Medical Center has been obtained due to the large number of medications that are scannable and the high nursing compliance rate with barcode scanning.
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