More bureaucratic idiocy invading the emergency room:
* We are required to write down precisely what the patient tells us, even if we know it is the wrong dosage! If the patient says they take 25 mg of Ativan every four hours, we have to write “Ativan, 25 mg” on the reconciliation form.* If the patient hands us a list of their medications and instead of “Furosemide”, they have written “Furobedide” we have to write it exactly as it is printed on the list!
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If that’s the information provided to you, than that’s what should be recorded and nothing else.
By the way, it’s a nice addition to this blog that we can receive e-mail updates to the threads.
Thanks, Kevin.
Isn’t this exactly why we do medication reconciliation? Not as an exercise in ‘writing down exactly what the patient tells us’;but rather a communication tool that allows us to ask “I think that that is an unusual dose (or drug name).” And then we ‘reconcile’ the information not just for writing it down but as a safety measure for us and as a teaching tool for the patient.
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