Hi folks! We’ve always described our mission as a community of pharmacists sharing best practices to improve the practice of pharmacy. We’re always asking questions because we want to know YOUR stories.
In the spirit of sharing, we’re introducing a new series called “Rpharmy Rounds” where we share stories from your peers about their pain points, successes, and innovations. We only learn and grow when we push ourselves outside of our comfort zones and know when to ask for help. We can’t wait to share some of the things we’ve heard from healthcare leaders.
First up, we’re talking about nurses and how to make their lives easier. Happy National Nurses Month to all the nurses out there, we appreciate everything you do! Laura posted a blog recently on how we are completing a user experience (UX) overhaul for Formweb, Rhazdrugs, and BlackboxRX. For more info on what UX actually means, check it out here. BlackboxRX is already live, so let me know what you think!
Now that you have the background on what UX is, I’m going to tell you about how one incredibly innovative client is optimizing user experience for nurses even before their go-live date and why you should be consulting nurses on your USP <800> plan.
In California, one health system organized several demos of their Rhazdrugs site with nurses to get feedback as part of their build process. Their pharmacy leaders presented the current state and then asked questions about the future state. Here are some valuable questions they asked their nurses.
1. What should the hazardous drugs link in the MAR be named?
Hazardous Med? Hazardous Med Link? Rhazmed? Should the hazard level be listed somewhere in the MAR?
2. Medication with multiple routes of administration: what should the naming convention be?
What information is the most important they need to see as the table headers?
- Injectable or oral?
- Injectable (IV/IM/SQ/IT) or oral?
- Injectable – minimal risk; oral – minimal risk?
- Injectable – minimal risk (table 2 RR); oral – minimal risk (table 2 RR)
3. Where should transportation information be located for nurses?
If the drug is not packaged correctly by the manufacturer, is it still safe to give to the patient? What if they find it in Omnicell instead of the fridge?
4. How should this information be organized?
Administration and patient care activities first? Should disposal be accessible right under administration?
5. Where should you specify if a drug requires consent before administration?
In supplemental information? Right before administration so it can be accessed faster?
A piece of feedback we heard from one nurse was, “Simple is better.” Nurses are the end users who need to know how to handle hazardous drugs, and it’s critical to make this information easily accessible and something they will actually click on. Nurses have seconds between seeing patients, and having to search for information is time-consuming and ineffective. When looking at an example of administration information for fluconazole, one nurse commented, “This is really clear, I don’t know how much simpler you could make it.”
Consulting their nurses before go-live of their new Rhazdrugs site also builds trust and brings them along for the transition to a new, improved, and automated future state.
Sitting in on these end-user calls and hearing feedback from nurses is invaluable for us. We applaud this health system’s initiative to gain insight and input from nursing before they go live; after all, protecting frontline workers like nurses is what this mandate is all about. One nurse said, “I feel like it is going to increase patient safety and staff safety as well.”
Have you consulted your nurses on your USP <800> plan? Have you asked any of the questions this health system asked? Let us know!
To conclude, we’ll end with our favorite question we heard from a nurse on this call: “When do we get to start using this?”
Now that is what we like to hear! If you’re interested in hearing the decisions made based on these questions, let us know. Want to be featured on Rpharmy Rounds? Click the link here or scan the QR code below. 
