It is believed that technology will enhance cost, safety, quality, and efficiency. Technology has transformed the way by which care had been delivered in the past. Before the technology, nurses and other health professionals relied heavily on senses to monitor patients and identify any abnormal findings. Nowadays, they use technology to detect changes in the conditions of the patient. For instance, before the technology nurses mostly relied on mental changes and skin colour to identify the level of oxygen saturation. However, with the invention of a pulse oximeter, it becomes easy for nurses to measure blood oxygenation accurately. It means that technology has played a significant role in enhancing the safe environment for the patient which improves the quality of care in a healthcare setting.
The paper aims to discuss the change to implement technology in promoting safety environment for the patient. The paper includes all details about the change process such as planning, implementation, and evaluation of the change process.
Discussion
The electronic medication management system is defined as the use of computers and electronic accessories to manage the administration of drugs. It will reduce medication error. According to the……….. use of EMAR in the administration of medications will replace medication records and charts. Besides this, it will make it easy for nurses to review medicines. The aim of this change is to execute an Electronic medication management system in the hospital setting to enhance the safety of patients by decreasing errors during medication. It can aid in improving the quality of services by integrating the organization, practitioner, pharmacy services, and nurses.
Resistance to Change
According to the………. every human being go through five stages of grief when faced with any change that includes “denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance” event in a case when change is positive for the organization. When news of the change is delivered to nurses and other healthcare professionals, it will be difficult for them to accept it and adopt it. The case becomes worst when employees are unaware of the change process. There are certainly human factors that can resist employees to adopt change in the practice such as lack of knowledge, unawareness of the change, poor working environment, poor communication with the management, and many more. According to the……… it is always important to consider several factors before introducing or implementing the change. These factors need to be treated in the planning phase by involving stakeholders and giving training to employees to adopt this new change.
Communication and Implementation of the Change
Incorporation of strategies for effective change management like encouraging the participation of different stakeholders in the planning phase of the process. The involvement of different healthcare professionals such as doctors, nurses, and pharmacists will help managers to identify resisting factors from different dimensions. Open communication is an important strategy of change management that aids employees to decrease their anxiety in the process of change. Though solutions based on technology have been proved to be very effective in reducing medication errors, they will only be incorporated by staff if it is reliable and will not add workload for staff related to a particular task.
Besides this, staff will be trained about the appropriate use of the EMAR system to administer medications. Training sessions will be held and it would make sure that these training sessions should be held in free time rather than during duty hours. Mobile medication trolleys with attached computers will be provided for each staff who is responsible for the administration of medications. The separate draw will be for the medications of each patient. Moreover, electronic scanning devices will be used to read the bar code of medicines to correctly identify the patient, dose, and medication.
How the Change will Promote Patient Safety
It is necessary to have an integrated electronic management system to track physical orders. It will make it easy for doctors to communicate and update the patient’s medication and other information through the system without moving to the ward. It will also help nurses to identify the correct patient and medication to reduce errors related to wrong medication or dose. Hence, implementing this new technology, it will make sure that each patient is receiving the highest quality of care.
Evaluation
The success of the change process will be evaluated by measuring the number of incidences reported related to medication errors. Pre-implantation audits along with post-implementation audits of medication errors can be done to determine the effectiveness of new changes in the management of medications. One of the major objectives of this change is to improve the medication administration time because the use of the system would enhance the administration time. Lastly, a satisfaction survey will be conducted in which several quantitative questionnaires will be asked by different healthcare professionals to assess the safety, efficacy, and easy access of the system.
