The Evening Times ran an article about figures in a new report showing that women from Lanarkshire experience higher-than-average rates of stillbirth and neonatal deaths than other parts of Scotland. The region recorded the second-highest rate in Scotland with 6.42 deaths per 1,000 births. However it is worth noting that the figure of 7,096 Lanarkshire resident […]
Reducing harms from high-risk medicines
A Hospital Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration (HEPMA) system has been implemented within NHS Lanarkshire.
The aim of HEPMA is to remove paper based processes from prescribing and medicines administration and significantly improve patient safety and quality of care.
Christine Gilmour, chief pharmacist, said: “HEPMA will improve our medicines management processes and enable greater control over what is prescribed, how it is prescribed and how it is administered.”
There are approximately 34 million prescriptions and 122 million administrations of medicines per year in NHS Scotland. With the increasing range and complexities of medicines available, safe and effective prescribing and administration is challenging.
In 2015, Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) released a publication outlining the scale of medication incidents and medication incidents related harm in NHS Scotland. It highlighted that 15,000 patients admitted to acute hospitals experience adverse drug events due to medicines, ranging from no harm to death. Research indicates that 72 per cent are preventable and there are up to 280 preventable deaths across all acute hospitals due to medicines.
Christine said: “The Scottish Patient Safety Programme has a strategic commitment to reduce the harm associated with high risk medicines and recognised that HEPMA is a key building block.
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