Impact of the “Drugspeak” Program on Drug Name Pronunciation Skills and Perceptions in a Pharmacy Student Cohort

Background: Medication errors can lead to life-threatening outcomes. Such errors can arise from the poor pronunciation of drug names, leading to the unintentional administration of incorrect medicines to patients. In our experience, students experience difficulties in pronouncing many drug names. We have devised a pilot study called DrugSpeak to provide students with the educational scaffolding required to pronounce both familiar and unfamiliar drug names correctly.Methods: A total of 26 willing student participants from a second-year Pharmacy course were provided access to online videos and audio recordings of drug names, and undertook a workshop that provided them with basic phonetics training to assist them in pronouncing drug names correctly. Students conducted audio recordings of a list of drug names at the start and end of the course, as well as surveys both before and after the intervention with the DrugSpeak Program. Results: Significant increases in student performances in terms of drug pronunciation and accuracy were observed following the DrugSpeak program. Students were strongly supportive of the DrugSpeak program in their coursework and perceived a high importance of drug pronunciation at university and in their future career paths. They also reported reductions in anxiety and improvements in their confidence levels arising from DrugSpeak in terms of their drug pronunciation proficiency levels.Conclusions: The DrugSpeak Program yielded promising outcomes in the improvement of student drug pronunciation skills, and in providing students with confidence to tackle drug names unfamiliar to them. Future studies will address the extensibility and effectiveness of the program in other health degree courses.

Assessing the compliance of accurately documenting medication history in CAMHS – completion of the audit cycle

AimsTo assess the documentation of medication across all Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) teams in the south region of Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust against a locally agreed protocol. The aim is to ensure accurate and timely documentation of medication history in a standardised way to reduce the risk of medication errors.MethodWe randomly selected 78 patients across seven teams within CAMHS that were currently prescribed medication as of November 2020. We reviewed each patient to see if medication history had been recorded in the specified section of the trust's patient database PARIS. We then cross referenced this information with the patient notes, clinic letters and prescriptions to review accuracy of information in terms of recording of drug name, dose, frequency, and whether the medication was regular or as required. We compared the data to the results of a previous audit in 2017 which used the same methods.ResultOf the 78 patients, 74% (n = 58) had medication recorded in the correct section of PARIS compared to 13% in the 2017 audit. We found that compliance varied between different CAMHS teams ranging from 0% to 100%. Of those with medication history recorded, 86% had all drug names listed correctly, 79% had all drugs listed at the correct dose, 71% had the correct frequency recorded and 81% had whether the medication was regular, or PRN recorded.ConclusionAlthough we have seen improvement in standardised documentation of medication history since 2017, it remains difficult to rely on this information being up to date and reliable. There was a wide range of compliance in documentation of medication history across different teams, possibly reflecting how effectively the teaching following the previous 2017 audit had been delivered to each team. We have completed more teaching for medical and non-medical prescribers across all localities to highlight the importance of timely and standardised documentation. This is particularly important in CAMHS where the prescribing of medication often remains the responsibility of secondary care, with clinicians regularly prescribing on behalf of colleagues from other teams. Our findings support the move within the Trust towards a system where medication can be both documented and electronically prescribed in the same place (System One).

Medical prescription and nursing administration of medication in learning disabilities in-patient settings

AimsThe aim of this re-audit was to review whether inpatientprescription cards are completed correctly by doctors and administered by nurses, and to compare the results with the previous audit.BackgroundWe carried out a re-audit of Medical Prescription and Nursing Administration of Medication in Learning Disabilities In-patient Settings. Black Country Partnership NHS Foundation Trust is committed to managing medicines safely, efficiently and effectively as a key part of delivering high quality patient centred care. In BCPFT medications are recorded by doctors on paper prescription cards and administered by registered nurses.MethodThis audit compared results against the standards for prescribing medication in BCPFT Medicines Policy.Prescription charts were retrospectively reviewed against 22 standards for all LD inpatients as outlined in the LD trust policy across all 3 of the Learning Disabilities in-patient units during May 2019 as long as they were still inpatients during this month. 27 prescription cards were reviewed in total.Result100% of prescription cards had patients full names , address , ward name, were fully legible , written in black ink, route of administration, approved abbreviation for route, date of prescription, signature of prescriber , prescription labelled as 1of 1 /2, frequency of prn meds and indication . Whereas only 96% had generic drug names, clearly documented doses and time of administration along with acceptable abbreviation and appropriate code for omission. 85% drugs had a stop date once drug was stopped and 85% had allergies recorded in red and had a line drawn through once drug was omitted.ConclusionThe re- audit was highlighted to inpatient managers, nursing staff, The Medicines Management Committee (MMC) anddoctors in the Learning Disability division. Prescribers werereminded of the importance of documenting a stop date for the prescriptions and signing off once drug is crossed out. It was discussed in MMC to consider removing the standard for recording allergies in red ink as the box is already red in colour. The PRN section for medication does not have an area to sign when the drug is cancelled and this in particular is the case when PRN medication is re-written. It was discussed to limit this standard to regular medication and to be taken in consideration if the current drug chart requires redesigning in the future. We also recommended a re- audit in 2 years’ time.

Regulatory 101: Drug Names – Reader Q&A

Medication errors occur in writing, print, speaking, and electronic communications; all of these modes must be considered in development of the drug name. The perspectives of health professionals with product name usage on a daily basis is far different than that of industry personnel who develop drug names for product recognition and commercial marketing.

Top-Down Processing of Drug Names Can Induce Errors in Discriminating Similar Pseudo-Drug Names by Nurses

Background One factor that could cause medical errors is confusing medicines with similar names. A previous study showed that nurses who have knowledge about drugs faced difficulty in discriminating a drug name from similar pseudo-drug names. To avoid such errors, finger-pointing and calling (FPC) has been recommended in Japan. Objectives The present study had two aims. The first was to determine whether such difficulty was due to top-down processing, rather than bottom-up processing, being applied even for pseudo-names. The other was to investigate whether FPC affected error prevention for similar drug names. Method In two experiments, nurses and non–health care professionals performed a choice reaction time task for drug names and common words, with or without FPC. Error rate and reaction time were analyzed. Results When drug names were used, nurses showed difficulty discriminating target names from distractors. Furthermore, the error prevention effect of FPC was marginally significant for drug names. However, nurses showed no significant differences when similar drug names were used. There was no significant difference regarding the error rate for words. Conclusions Nurses’ knowledge of drug names activates top-down processing. As a result, the processing of drug names was not as accurate and quick as that for words for nurses, which caused difficulty in discriminating similar names. FPC may be applicable to reduce confusion errors, possibly by leading individuals to process drug names using bottom-up processing. Application The present study advances current knowledge about error tendencies with similar drug names and the effects of FPC on error prevention.

MEMBANGUN BASIS PENGETAHUAN UNTUK INTERAKSI OBAT DENGAN SOSIAL MEDIA

With many adults using social media to discuss health information, researchers have begun to dive into this resource to monitor or detect health conditions at the population level. Twitter, in particular, has grown to several hundred million users and can attend rich source of information for detecting serious medical conditions, such as adverse drug reactions (ADRs). However, Twitter too presents unique challenges due to brevity, lack of structure, and informal language. We crawled data from Twitter presenting 10,822 freely available tweets, which can be used to train automated tools to mine Twitter for ADR. We collect tweets using drug names as keywords, but expanding it by applying the Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithm to produce misspelled versions of drug names for and drug interactions. We annotate each tweet for the presence of mentioning interactions, and for those who have, mention annotations. Agreement between our annotators for binary classification. We evaluate the usefulness of the dataset with machine learning algorithm training classes: using C.45..

The Irony of MedWatch and the FAERS Database: An Assessment of Data Input Errors and Potential Consequences

Health care delivery revolves around accurate documentation, with data management free from error. A seemingly insignificant typographical error can cause short- and long-term problems that may lead to inaccurate records and misinformation. This report presents an overview of input errors in the US Food and Drug Administration Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS). The focus is on errors and inconsistencies in reporting of drug names in the FAERS database, initiated through input of the MedWatch reporting system. The consequences from erroneous data input—in this case, drug names—can have an impact on data integrity, research, and patient safety.