Paediatric Medication Safety Workbook

This teaching package aims to alert staff to the risks involved when medicines are administered to children and the measures that can be taken to improve safety and prevent harm related to use of medicines in Alder Hey.

It is completed by nurses, pharmacists and operating department practitioners on induction, and every 3 years.

Description

The content of the workbook was based upon a previous in-house e-learning package but also includes national safety issues relevant to paediatric patients. This package allows for participants to review a medication error and also view where errors can occur on our e-prescribing system. It also details how to prevent medication errors and gives examples of medication errors applicable to paediatrics.

It takes approximately 45 to 90 minutes to complete. The user can go through the workbook in one sitting, or complete in stages.  The content is available on the Trust intranet site for reference, should staff want to refer back to the information at a later date.

Implementation

The workbook was produced by the Pharmacy Medication Safety Team.

A draft version was circulated to experienced nursing staff, consultant paediatricians and members of the Medication Safety (MSC) and Medicines Management and Optimisation (MMOC) Committees.  The draft was accompanied by a survey monkey questionnaire to identify whether content was relevant and the package was user-friendly.

The results of this survey were then used to amend the content before ratification by the MMOC. This was introduced in April 2017 as part of a medication safety training package. It is now part of the education plan and it available on our Intranet.

Suggestions for Further Implementation

The content can be adapted for other paediatric hospitals.

We had previously developed an interactive e-learning package for medication safety with an external company but found updates and changes to the content were very difficult to implement in a timely fashion.  Some staff also informed us that they would prefer a paper learning tool so we ensured the workbook could be printed without compromising the content. Using PowerPoint proved to be a much easier process yet we have still produced an effective learning tool which can be updated easily. Working with nurses to see what they would find useful when using the package was also part of the learning.

This was approved by our local Trust. The content can be adapted for other paediatric hospitals. The Medication Safety Committee agreed the content based on recurrent or serious errors reported within the Trust and nationally.