Improving Resident Care

National Pharmacy systems allow nurses to have more time for direct resident care activities. Some examples include:

• Active drug use reviews to reduce the number of medications per resident. This can be accomplished by critical medication profile reviews and/or "dechallenge trials" in which the ongoing need for a particular drug is evaluated by withdrawal of the drug for a specific period of time.
• The pouch PAK™ has all meds needed for one pass are packaged together in a single tear-off pouch for anytime intervals. This system has been proven to decrease time spent on medication duties and reduce drug errors.
• Active BID (twice daily) dosing program reduces the number of drug passes per resident. In a BID program, the pharmacist makes recommendations to the physician, on medication changes that will result in meds being given less frequently (e.g. BID or OD instead of TID or QID).
• Targeting of specific drug therapies to reduce time spent on medication passes. Examples of recent initiatives include switching from Atrovent to Spiriva Inhalers (once daily) and Elocom as a standard topical corticosteriod as it is used only once daily.