« Back to Home

Important Reasons Nursing Managers Should Integrate Automated Services In Medical Carts

Posted on

As a nursing manager, you may have several tasks that are important and vital to each day of patient care. However, finding every way to save time during the span of one shift can be the difference in the level of patient care you and your associates are able to provide. If you are a nursing manager, learn how the integration of automation to your med carts can help you maintain greater inventory of essential supplies normally found on your carts.

Adding A Higher Level Of Protection To Paper Checklists

Traditionally, nursing professionals using med carts fill out a paper checklist as they start their shift and when their shift is over, detailing the supplies and drugs they started out with and the supplies and drugs used during their shift. While this method has been used for a long time, it is by no means fail-proof due to the likely occurrences of human error. Not only do paper checklists leave a lot of room for mistakes, it is time-consuming as well. By integrating computerized inventory systems on each of your med carts, your employees have more time to give to their patients and there are fewer chances for human errors. The fewer mistakes in inventory checklists, the fewer fines and other issues you and your professionals may have to face due to issues like an off-kilter narcotic drug count.

Bar-Coding Is The Best Way To Differentiate Between Similar Bottles

Some vials and bottles for medications look a lot alike, leaving a lot of room for mistakes during cart stocking. This can be an especially serious problem on crash carts in an operating room when a drug is needed for procedures like resuscitation. If the wrong drug is in the drawer for a certain drug, the chances for wrongfully medicating a patient is greater as well. A computerized, automated bar-coding scanning system is the best way to avoid mistakes that could ultimately cost a life.

Carts Are Constantly Being Shifted To Various Floors Or Departments

If your med carts were always in the same place each day, you and the people working under you would have an easier time keeping up with the supplies on it. However, in many busy medical facilities, especially in the hospital setting, med carts get moved to other departments or floors as they are needed for patient care. When you are the responsible for inventory control on your carts, knowing what was on it when the nurse in the department over from you borrowed it is a good idea. By using an automated system, the nurse borrowing your cart would have to sign as its user, relieving you of any issues like supplies or drugs missing that are not found in patient care charts.

Protecting yourself and your employees is a serious part of your job as a nursing manager. If you are still using the old-fashioned method of cart inventory control using paper checklists, checking into how you can integrate computerized systems is a good idea. Contact a company like Instant Inventory Service for more information.


Share