The Indianapolis Coalition for Patient Safety (ICPS) and The Center for Medication Safety Advancement at the Purdue College of Pharmacy (CMSA)
The Indianapolis Coalition for Patient Safety (ICPS) and the Center for Medication Safety Advancement at the Purdue College of Pharmacy (CMSA), along with IHA and the 11 regional patient safety coalitions across the state, collaborated with several health systems in order to produce a statewide standard list for adult IV concentrations. This list, the Indiana Standard Concentrations of Adult Drug Infusions List, documents 28 different concentrations representing 26 medications. The ICPS wrote a descriptive report that detailed the consensus-driven process completed to arrive at a standardized list, which they shared with the
American Journal of Health-system Pharmacists. A companion editorial stated that Indiana's work should be the model for the country. This work paves the way for health systems and hospitals to standardize their adult IV concentrations not only within the state of Indiana, but nationally as well. Change is hard and takes a long time, but through these efforts of standardizing IV concentrations, the work environment for medical personnel will promote patient safety, be less complex and more consistent. Read the full
American Journal of Health-system Pharmacists editorial and the full
"Standardizing concentrations of adult drug infusions in Indiana" article. For more information, contact Dan Degnan, PharmD, at
ddegnan@purdue.edu or Jim Fuller, PharmD with ICPS, at
jfuller@indypatientsafety.org.
The Indianapolis Coalition for Patient Safety (ICPS) Smart Pump Alert Fatigue Workgroup
The Indianapolis Coalition for Patient Safety (ICPS) began the Smart Pump Alert Fatigue Workgroup in 2013 to reduce clinically insignificant alerts and identify best practices pertaining to smart pump utilization. Thanks to the combined efforts of multiple hospital systems, a consensus of six key strategies for managing smart pump libraries was developed.These strategies include identifying which individuals are to be involved in the review process, a timeline for reviewing alerts, content for review, an approval process for changes, cross-department communication and education and follow-up with ongoing review post-implementation. As a result, there has been a significant decrease in the number of alerts presented to end users of smart pumps, nurses and pharmacists to receive more meaningful alerts and faster administration of medication to patients because of more efficient smart pump use. Creating a culture more aware of smart pumps makes changes more effective and allows for more focus on significant alerts. The work contributed from the Smart Pump Alert Fatigue Workgroup has set in motion the meaningful review of alerts and the limitation of insignificant alerts. For more information, contact Todd Walroth, PharmD, ICPS Smart Pump Safety Workgroup chair, at todd.walroth@eskenazihealth.edu, or Jim Fuller, PharmD with ICPS, at
jfuller@indypatientsafety.org.
