Why the Organization Needs to Address the Current problem
Staff Expectations
Nurses will be crucial in implementing and driving the computerized medication reconciliation plan. Their main roles will be: Assessment of patients’ medication history, Identification of medication discrepancies, and Joint role in medication reconciliation. In this regard, nurses will carry out a two-step verification of prescribed medications, update the EMR, and inform the physician to sign off on the list during the admission of every patient. At discharge, nurses will reconcile the drugs prescribed in the care home and forward ambulatory records to the patient’s provider.
During follow-up visits, a nurse and physician will verify the medication list (Kreckman et al., 2018). Nurses will kick off the ambulatory medication reconciliation at admission, review the list within 24 hours of discharge, and attend the follow-up visit to ensure continuity of care. Therefore, they have a major role in improving the medication reconciliation process and reducing medication errors.
Why the Staff Are Critical To the Success
Nurses will be important to the success of the computerized medication reconciliation plan since they play a vital role in the safety of medicines management during transitional care. They will be significant members of the transitional care team. They are critical to the improvement plan’s success since they are well-versed in evaluating transitional care plans, identifying potential problems, and addressing them appropriately to improve patient safety (Mardani et al., 2020).
Furthermore, involving nurses in medication management of transitional care helps provide access to care for patients with fragmented care or those at risk of readmission. Nurses are critical because they will improve the workflow for referring physicians and support care navigation back to community healthcare providers through patient education and medication self-management (Mardani et al., 2020).
How Their Work Could Benefit
Nurses’ work can significantly benefit from embracing their role in the improvement plan since they will participate in interdisciplinary collaboration to promote patient safety. Besides, nurses will be able to take more responsibility and get more involved in patient safety initiatives (Mardani et al., 2020). They will also be able to act proactively to protect and maintain the safety of medication management by disclosing and reporting errors. Furthermore, nurses will be involved in decreasing medication side effects and ADRs by monitoring medication and providing informational support to physicians, pharmacists, patients, and their families (Mardani et al., 2020). Lastly, they can apply fundamental nursing interventions to reduce potentially adverse consequences on patients’ wellbeing.
New Process and Skills Practice
The staff will need skills in using the admission electronic medication reconciliation tool. Thus, they will be trained on the medication reconciliation tool and provided electronic documents with step-by-step instructions. Providers will need skills in determining the accuracy of the discharge medication lists made with the Discharge Instruction element in the tool and given to the patient by comparing this list with the list provided in the discharge summary (Marien et al., 2018). They will also need to learn techniques for presenting a medication list to a patient and for updates to the medication list.
Simulation training will be conducted whereby providers will use a medication reconciliation tool to model the real-clinical scenario. During the simulation-based training, the providers will be taught how to perform various medication reconciliation tasks in different clinical scenarios. They will also ask questions about the implementation of the tool.
Likely questions and responses include:
1.How do we gather the best possible medication history: Use information from various sources and obtain this information electronically by linking the tool to medication lists of other systems like EMR, CPOE, and pharmacy claims.
2.How will the tool help in the identification of discrepancies? The tool uses animations and has different filters for classification. This will help providers to recognize, contextualize, and manage medication discrepancies (Marien et al., 2018).
3.How will the medication discrepancies be resolved? We will explore and develop decision support algorithms to help providers identify clinically meaningful discrepancies.
Soliciting Feedback
I would ask for feedback from the audience on the electronic medication reconciliation by brainstorming with them to give their views on the benefits and potential challenges of implementing the plan. For t