St Luke’s General Hospital Carlow/Kilkenny has introduced mobile tablet devices in clinical rooms to promote medicine information and medication safety.

Samsung Galaxy devices have been placed in clinical rooms on each ward with the aim of reducing the reliance on paper-based documents and to provide access to important prescribing information at the point of medicine administration.

A spokesperson for the hospital told Pulse+IT that the availability, accessibility and awareness of medicines information at St Luke’s Hospital was previously identified as a risk reduction strategy to improve patient safety.

The decision was taken to deploy mobile devices with access to relevant medicines information resources and remove as many barriers to access as possible, including saving login details.

“We have had very positive feedback from staff in the hospital,” the spokesperson said. “Promotion of use of the devices and provision of education to staff is ongoing.”

In October 2017, HIQA carried out an announced inspection of medication safety at the hospital, which identified specific risks related to the preparation of intravenous medications within the patient zone.

It also identified that paediatric patients undergoing medical assessment were being accommodated in an ancillary room with unsecure access to medications and consumables including needles, syringes, intravenous cannulae and sharps waste disposal bins.

At the time, inspectors found that a local medication formulary did not exist in the hospital. The ensuing report noted that while there was a clinical pharmacy service in place, it was not fully comprehensive, and the paediatric and maternity services did not have an allocated clinical pharmacy service.

It was recommended that the clinical pharmacy service provision at the hospital be evaluated “in light of the added challenges and risks experienced in medication use in these settings”.

HIQA also recommended that the pharmacy department and the medication safety committee should create a centralised and coordinated medication safety programme to strengthen and focus existing approaches to quality improvement.