Seminar Operational 3: Working together to improve the prescription process

Abstract:

The medication use process consists of sequential steps and is often separated into prescribing, dispensing, administering, documentation and monitoring. The decision to prescribe a drug is the first step in a sequential and interdependent number of actions to take place.

A correct prescription is crucial when ensuring that patients get their right medication. Many solutions have been developed and reported in order to support the optimization of safe prescription of medicine. Among many others these include implementation of treatment guidelines, pre-printed order sets and a variety of computer assisted physician order entry systems. One way to share the information of medicine prescribed by the family doctor and by hospital doctors is a national electronic registry of all citizens’ currently prescribed medication – a Shared Medication Record.

Traditionally the individual physician has been responsible for and supreme in the prescribing process, but multidisciplinary and intersectoral collaboration is emerging.  It aims to benefit patients by making better use of healthcare professionals’ skills. The right to prescribe has in some countries been extended to pharmacists and nurses with further healthcare professions expected to follow.

With their knowledge on drug therapy and risk assessment hospital pharmacists can contribute to this development in several ways.

Teaching goals:

• demonstrate different approaches to the improvement of the prescription process
• illustrate how shared electronic systems can support the medication process
• illustrate how the prescription of drugs can include different disciplines

Learning objectives:

After the presentation the participant should:

• be able to describe benefits and challenges in implementing and using a shared medication record system for family doctors and hospitals
• be able to discuss advantages and obstacles in having prescribing by different professions
• be able to set up and participate in debates on how to improve the medication process locally