9th June 2021
Trust achieves improvements in medicines-related patient safety for its mental health patients by implementing Civica Prescribing
Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (LPFT), an NHS provider of specialist health and social care services for people with a learning disability and/or mental health issues, is now live with Civica Prescribing on its rehabilitation and low secure inpatient wards.
Civica’s electronic prescribing and medicines administration (ePMA) solution, which supports the NHS strategy to reduce medication errors, has helped LPFT to lower the potential risk of incidents relating to medicines caused by missed signatures or doses, and incorrect transcriptions by prescribers.
The Trust will continue to plan the roll-out of Civica’s software to the remaining inpatient wards followed by deployment to all community based prescribing teams.
The safety protocols and clinical decision support within the software has given clinicians access to an ePMA workflow designed specifically for mental health. Crucially, it is helping the Trust to reduce the likelihood of medication errors caused by incorrect prescribing or administration, and therefore safeguards patient-care from medication-related harm.
The solution has enabled a streamlined automated supply service with the Trust’s outsourced dispensing provider by removing the need for manual transcription of orders.
Staff now have a single medication record for each patient, with the functionality to enable previous medication histories to be viewed. This provides operational and clinical insight to users to help improve safer prescribing practice and choice.
Here’s what staff members at the Trust are saying after using Civica Prescribing:
Medical:
“My time using ePMA has reduced the likelihood of errors when prescribing new medications and for requesting TTOs, therefore increasing patient safety. It allows distant prescribing which is particularly useful during the current COVID-19 pandemic. The system facilitates easy access to patient information as well as improving healthcare efficiency by limiting the number of times that prescription errors need to be corrected. For example, patients may need to wait longer for a doctor to correct errors on their med card.
“ePMA prompts the user if information is missing, reducing prescription error so patients can have their treatment in a timely manner. ePMA also reduces the time required for the pharmacist to verify patient information.”
Pharmacist:
“Civica’s ePMA allows remote screening of prescriptions on multiple wards, for better pharmacist time management and more face to face patient interactions on different wards.
“It also allows me to check and order medication prescribed outside of ward visit times with ease when prompted by the prescriber or nursing staff, to avoid medication being marked as ‘out of stock’ until the next pharmacy visit.
“I no longer have to check rewrites, freeing up valuable clinical time. It reduces the amount of errors by ensuring prescribers are producing complete prescriptions and nurses have the additional information they need to safely administer medications at the correct time and frequency. Prescriptions are always clear and legible and discharge prescriptions are printed and accurate. The system highlights which medications need to be screened first and ordering medications is a much more streamlined process.”
Nurse:
“Civica Prescribing has removed prescription transcribing errors. I no longer need to ask a doctor to rewrite a card because of space. We now have clear review, start and stop dates and the system has never missed a doctor’s signature.
“By automatically timing and lockout between doses, I never have to work out how many hours there should be between doses. It’s easier to order medicines with one click and the allergy section is much clearer.”