Nurses who prepare drugs in the regional carry an identifying vest so as not to interrupt them

Nurses of the Regional Hospital (Antiguo Carlos Haya) have launched a patient security strategy with the aim of avoiding errors in the preparation and administration of medicines.Specifically, these are vests that professionals will put themselves when they are working with a pharmacological treatment, which will allow them to be identified to reduce interruptions during this task.

This piloting starts from the nursing of the Neuroscience Assistance Unit, which encompasses various services with complex patients such as stroke, brain surgeries or epilepsies, among other diseases of neurological or cerebral origin.Through this measure, with which patients and professionals will be informed through posters and explanatory talks, it is intended to establish a security strategy of the patient to reduce the interruptions of the nursing staff and, consequently, reduce the possible errors that may occurthus.

The Neurology Care Coordinator, Luisa Vergara, points out that interruptions while preparing drugs increase 13 percent of the risk of medication error."They are a disturbing factor of the nurse, to which it generates stress in the dynamics of the nursing process, and the main critical point at the time of the error commission," says Vergara, which is one of the nurses from which he has leftThis initiative.As she indicates, nursing professionals are exposed "to a constant interruption process that produces a cognitive overload in their professional performance, which facilitates errors."

The Neurosurgery Care Coordinator, María José García, says that incidents of errors in medication preparation or administration “are usually related to professional practice, procedures or systems, including prescription failures, in communication, in the labeling or packaging, in addition to the denomination, the preparation, the dispensation, the distribution, the administration, and, even, in the monitoring of the same ».

Garcia, who is also a precursor to this initiative, acknowledges that in daily practice some of these interruptions can be, from the alarm of a nutrition pump to a relative who asks for the health of a patient, passing through the phone or careTo a partner who can present any doubt."With this simple decision, patient safety can be increased throughout its income," says María José García.

The Regional Hospital Neurosciences unit serves 3,200 patients every year, who spend an average income of 8.4 days.The nursing of said care unit wanted to export this measure, implanted in other Andalusian centers, with the aim of increasing the security of the patient.