Connection between the hospital prescription program and the parenteral nutrition compounding program

Abstract

Background During the parenteral nutrition (PN) compounding process, medical prescriptions must be transcribed in the pharmacy department, where there is an increased risk of medication errors. Purpose To describe the implementation of the connection between the hospital prescription program and the PN compounding program. Materials and methods From November to December 2010, an explanatory document was prepared to cover all the products used in the preparation of PN for adult and paediatric patients and the calculations performed to convert the medical prescription in the units of volume for the PN preparation. A second document was developed to collect the data issued by the electronic prescription program (Prescriplant), patient information (history number, name, service, bed, and weight), prescription information (date, time, service, prescribing physician) and information on PN (total volume, nitrogen, glucose, lipids, sodium, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, calcium, chloride, acetate, zinc, trace elements and vitamins). From January to February 2011, an external provider (Intercath) entered this information in the PN program of the MedicalOne®parenteral database and made the necessary adjustments so that the program could automatically calculate PN. Results The Prescriplant® program was connected with the MedicalOne®parenteral program. The PN was generated automatically in the MedicalOne®parenteral program using the information obtained from the Prescriplant® program according to previous indications. Tests were performed over a month to validate the calculations made by the program, both for adult and paediatric patients. The necessary adjustments were made, and the calculations that the program did not perform well were corrected. Conclusions Connection of the Prescriplant® program with the MedicalOne®parenteral program avoids manual transcription of the hospital pharmacist and simplifies the PN compounding process.