Ochsner Children’s focusing on pharmacist training with ISMP partnership

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Ochsner Children’s in New Orleans and the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, an organization that focuses on preventing medication errors, have started a joint fellowship focused on medication safety, with the goal of educating pharmacists on preventing errors to improve patient safety and outcomes.

During their year-long Ochsner Children’s and ISMP Safe Medication Management Fellowship, participants will have the opportunity to learn from experts virtually while supporting error prevention efforts onsite at Ochsner Children’s. The fellowship will begin this summer.

WHAT’S THE IMPACT

The organizations said that participants in the fellowship will have an opportunity to make a difference in medication safety by undertaking broad-based communication about errors and their prevention; developing interdisciplinary error-prevention strategies; and creating educational initiatives that reach healthcare professionals and the general public with safety-related information.

“Ochsner Children’s provides an ideal environment to prepare the next generation of practitioners,” said Ochsner Children’s CEO Dana Bledsoe. “Together with ISMP, we are dedicated to advancing a safer and healthier future for every patient in our care.”

Ochsner Children’s treats more than 100,000 children annually. It’s a part of Ochsner Health, which delivers care at 46 hospitals and more than 370 health and urgent care centers.

ISMP is a nonprofit that has advocated for humorous changes in clinical practice, public policy, and drug labeling and packaging over the past 25 years. ISMP was acquired by ECRI, a global healthcare quality and safety nonprofit, in 2020.

THE LARGER TREND

When pharmacy professionals, rather than doctors or nurses, take medication histories of patients in emergency departments, mistakes in drug orders can be reduced by more than 80%, according to a 2017 study led by Cedars-Sinai.

In the study, the investigators focused on 306 medically complex patients at Cedars-Sinai who were taking 10 or more prescription drugs and had a history of heart failure or other serious conditions. The results showed that when pharmacists or pharmacy technicians, instead of medical staff, took these patients’ histories in the Cedars-Sinai Emergency Department, errors in both the histories and medication orders fell by more than 80%. 

As a result, significantly fewer drug-order errors were made during hospitalization.

Jeff Lagasse is editor of Healthcare Finance News.
Email: jlagasse@himss.org
Healthcare Finance News is a HIMSS Media publication.