A new report ‘SAFE: Banishing Medication Errors in Care Homes (Safeguard Against Frontline Errors)’ has been published by Omnicell UK & Ireland, a provider of automated healthcare and medication adherence solutions.
The report is part of a campaign to raise awareness and promote best practice standards of care for the management of medication to help drive change and improve patient safety across care homes.
Earlier this year, the Department of Health found that in England 237 million mistakes occur at some point in the medication process. Out of the 237 million medication errors that occur per year in England, the largest proportion occurs in care homes (41.7 per cent).
Residents in care homes take an average of 7.2 medicines per day. With each additional medicine comes an increased risk of errors in prescription, monitoring, dispensing or administration, adverse drug reactions, impaired medicines adherence and compromised quality of life for patients.
The SAFE report found that within care homes most medication errors (92 per cent) happen during administration. Almost 70 per cent of care home residents have experienced at least one error in their medication regime, according to the finding from the Care Home use of Medicines Study.
The reliance on outdated paper-based medicines administration records (MAR) means the accuracy of these records need constant review. They also bring a higher risk of human error in the selection and administration process.
Omnicell eMAR automates the medication management and administration process making it safe, simple and compliant for everyone involved. The system gathers information, provides prompts and accurate instructions for staff and gives managers real time medication administration data at the touch of a button, so they can be sure that the right dose has been administered at the right time to the right resident.
Paul O’Hanlon, managing director at Omnicell UK & Ireland, comments; “We’ve been working with care home managers and staff to implement Omnicell eMAR since its launch in 2016. Since launching eMAR, we found out that staff are willing to embrace systems that improve patient safety and enable them to dramatically reduce medication errors.
"The academic study commissioned by the Department of Health, helped to raise awareness of the scale of medication errors within the NHS and highlighted the need for technology to help to prevent them. The SAFE report recommends automation as a safety net for minimising selection and administration errors by care home staff in medicines rounds.”
This year, Omnicell is implementing a SAFE campaign amongs key opinion leaders within care homes, secondary care and pharmacies in order to raise awareness of the impact of medication errors. The campaign aims to drive real change and awareness of the role that technology can play in tackling the problem.
