Final Project: Final Submission: Patient Safety Presentation

PMDS Adoption

Over the last few decades, the world has witnessed a tremendous growth in technology that is being applied across all sectors of the economy to aid its daily operations. Notably, one of the most significant healthcare technologies adopted by most healthcare providers is the Pyxis Medication Dispensing System (PMDS). PMDS is a “sophisticated automated medication dispensing system that uses technology to help healthcare practitioners to store medications, dispense them, and also track the medication records” (Mackert et al., 2016). PMDS is fitted with an enhanced technology comprising of a bar-code scan that helps clinicians to get the right medication for a particular patient. Medical practitioners and nurses can also use this system to ensure they issue the right dosage to a patient while at the same evading errors that may occur when prescribing drugs to the patient. This inbuilt scanner also helps to ensure that the right medications are put into the cabinet during the process of restocking. The system has also the capability of warning the users from taking more than the prescribed drugs in order to avoid waste (Tsao et al., 2014).

Advantages

The adoption of Pyxis Medication Dispensing System can be advantageous to both the patients and the healthcare providers. First, it helps to enhance and improve the efficiency during the process of dispensing drugs since the system offers a single and central point of drug dispensation. This is because it reduces the manual way of counting medication to ensure that they are in their right doses hence saving labor and time (de-Carvalho, Alvim-Borges & Toscano, 2017). Secondly, the system helps to ensure that the patient safety is enhanced. By using the inbuilt scanner, the clinician can ensure that right medication is issued to the patient in the appropriate dosage. Thirdly, the system can be used to minimize the costs linked to carrying out the inventory process manually since the PMDS helps the organization to order the pharmaceuticals according to the current demand and supply (de-Carvalho, Alvim-Borges & Toscano, 2017).

Disadvantages

Despite the advantages associated with the adoption of Pyxis Medication Dispensing System by any healthcare facility, the system has got a number of shortcomings. The first disadvantage is costs linked to the installation and maintenance of the system is very high. Secondly, is the security and system failure can lead to the administration of wrong medication –something that can be dangerous to patients or end users (de-Carvalho, Alvim-Borges & Toscano, 2017).

Legal and Ethical Issues

There are several legal and ethical issues linked to the adoption and utilization of PMDS to dispense drugs in the hospitals. One of the most significant legal and ethical issues is the confidentiality and privacy of the patient data captured and stored within the system. Moreover, autonomy is another issue since unauthorized people like researchers and other non-healthcare people can access patient’s private data. In such cases, the patient can sue the healthcare provider for leaking such confidential data, which should remain private (Anyanwu & Egwim, 2016). Hence, under all circumstances, healthcare providers should strive as much as possible to ensure that patient’s data captured and stored within the system does not get into the wrong hands. Moreover, the clinicians and systems administrators should strive to ensure that medical errors associated with system failure are minimized. If that is not taken care of, errors may lead to the administration of unsafe medication, which can also lead to adverse effects on the patient, this can be a very serious ethical issue to the healthcare professionals.

References

Anyanwu, C., & Egwim, O. (2016). The prevalence and determinants of controlled substance discrepancies in a Level I trauma hospital. American health & drug benefits, 9(3), 128.

de-Carvalho, D., Alvim-Borges, J. L., & Toscano, C. M. (2017). Impact assessment of an automated drug-dispensing system in a tertiary hospital. Clinics, 72(10), 629-636.

Mackert, M., Mabry-Flynn, A., Champlin, S., Donovan, E. E., & Pounders, K. (2016). Health literacy and health information technology adoption: the potential for a new digital divide. Journal of medical Internet research, 18(10), e264.

Tsao, N. W., Lo, C., Babich, M., Shah, K., & Bansback, N. J. (2014). Decentralized automated dispensing devices: systematic review of clinical and economic impacts in hospitals. The Canadian journal of hospital pharmacy, 67(2), 138.