At any Residential Care Facility for the Elderly (RCFE), medication management is par for the course. As we age in our modern era, most of us turn to medication to ease discomfort and minimize health risks. In fact, it’s common for residents to be on a blend of medications designed to soothe arthritis, control blood pressure and cholesterol levels, support healthy sleep, and more.
As a result, your staff is tasked with properly organizing and administering all of the pills, liquids, injections, etc. that your residents need. Medication management usually represents a fair bit of an RCFE employee’s workday.
Unfortunately, with all of the focus and effort this requires, things can slip through the cracks. If you find yourself facing a medication error at your facility, we have some tips to help.
#1: Encourage Transparency
In many cases, the faster your team can respond to a medication error, the better the health outcome will be for the resident. And, consequently, the less likely you are to find yourself in some sort of trouble over the issue, legal or otherwise.
To ensure you can quickly respond to medication errors, create a culture that invites people to come forward when they’ve made a mistake. If your staff feels like they need to hide their errors, you don’t have the chance to correct them. Create an easy, blame-free reporting process for them to follow.
#2: Turn to Your Medication Administration Records (MARs)
A Medication Administration Record (MAR) does two things to help when it comes to medication error management.
First, if an error does occur, the MAR helps to ensure it gets captured and reported quickly. It also allows your team to see all of the individual’s other recent medication, helping you to create the best plan to move forward and protect their health.
Secondly, the requirement to fill out a MAR helps staff slow down and be mindful as they administer medication. The temptation to just hand over a handful of pills and walk away gets eliminated.
#3: Get the Right People Involved
Usually, this means contacting the resident’s physician right away to notify them of the error. This way, that medical expert can recommend any treatment that might help to rectify the situation health-wise.
You generally also want to assign a staff member to monitor the resident and regularly check their vitals.
Depending on the severity of the error and its implications, it might also make sense to inform the resident and/or their family. When you do, be ready to explain clearly not just what happened, but what you’re not doing to correct the situation.
Preventing Future Errors
A medication error has the potential to harm your residents and create a range of problems for your facility. To help avoid this unwelcome scenario, work to:
- Provide staff training. Don’t let your team get complacent about their medication administration duties. Regular staff training helps to remind everyone of the importance of this part of their responsibilities.
- Minimize distractions. If your team has to navigate a pile of pill bottles while simultaneously talking to a resident or doing something else, the odds of them making a mistake goes up. Find a way for your team to organize medications in a distraction-free setting. Oftentimes, this means having one person allocate everyone’s daily dosages into easy-to-distribute vehicles (like little cups). This way, the team member with the resident can focus on their care, not reading prescription labels or counting doses.
- Deploy technology. Options like automated dispensing machines and barcodes staff scan before administering medication can help to lower the likelihood of human error.
If things escalate and you do find yourself in a difficult legal situation after a medication error, the right RCFE liability insurance can come to the rescue. These policies help with legal fees and even the resulting settlement if you lose the case. To make sure your facility is sufficiently covered, contact us at (805) 413-5668.
