The use of care givers is on the rise. They have a range of responsibilities including grocery shopping, cleaning, cooking and helping patients with medication. It’s this last duty that Prepackaged medication can be a huge convenience.
Your patients deserve quality care and the best form of medications available. Prepackaged medications offer both your patient and their caregivers the best in quality, ease of administration, and less room for error.
Prepackaged medication makes it easier for care givers to keep your patients compliant, improving their overall health, and helping them be successful in reaching treatment goals.Prepackaged medications provide a higher safety level for care givers and makes administering medication simpler.
Saving the care giver and patient time may be the best convenience offered by prepackaged medication.
These conveniences are discussed in more detail below.
Administering Convenience
With Prepackaged medications, the caregiver can simply separate the individual doses from the rest of the package, open it and administer it to the patient. The caregiver does not have to worry about overdose or under-dose issues because it is easy to track.
The caregiver never has to guess whether medication has already been taken. They can simply use the easy to track counting calendar on the prepackaged medicines. This is also helpful when more than one caregiver is tending to a patient.
It is common that caregivers work in shifts for patients who have extensive medical needs. Prepackaged medication makes it simple for everyone involved in the care of a patient to know exactly how much medication has been administered and when.
Each caregiver can easily monitor patient medication, avoiding errors that can happen when the caregivers are unable to communicate with each other in detail between shifts.
Safety Convenience
As a physician, you want to ensure your patients safety at all levels. Many times, this means you are working with care givers, educating them how to be more careful with patient care. This includes teaching caregivers how to avoid medication errors.
By filling prescriptions within your office, your patients can worry less about pharmacist errors and more about getting well. Pharmacists make mistakes, not on purpose, but it does happen. Prepackaged medicines prevent many of the errors caused by pharmacists and pharmacy technicians.
From misreading prescriptions, cross-contamination or giving the wrong dose, pharmacy errors can be fatal. Another concern is the safety of the container. If the wrong person can get into a medicine package, it could result in negative consequences for the patient.
Medication safety is also important, from how it is stored to its container.
Caregivers can choose Prepackaged medication storage that is easy for them to use but still safe from tampering. Prepackaging companies are experts in containers and the standards set forth for protecting medicine. They follow strict quality control regulations.
All of this means the children and young family members of your patients will not be able to open medication containers that may be left lying around the house. These containers passing quality control procedures make it safer for everyone.
Prepackaged medication allows care givers to feel more confident in administering medicine to their client.
Time Convenience
Prepackaged medications can be dispensed by you at the point of care. This can save both the care provider, the patient and you, substantial amounts of time because you no longer must deal with pharmacies.
Point of Care dispensing saves your patients anywhere from one hour to several hours of time. It saves you time by eliminating pharmacy communications, giving you freedom to focus on the care of your patients. It saves the care giver time, as they do not need to go to the pharmacy and wait.
Dispensing in-office allows the care provider to retrieve the patient’s medication upon checkout. Therefore, they can spend more time caring for your patient and less time waiting in lines.
Labeling Convenience
Correct labeling is important in all medication production, especially prepackaged. The label, even though small, contains a large amount of information that can help a caregiver provide adequate and proper healthcare. Prepackaging facilities know just how vital this information can be.
Name of the physician, brand name of the drug, and patient name are three pieces of information on a label. Other pieces include drug expiration date, safety warnings such as “may cause drowsiness”, and instructions on how to take the medicine.
Some medicines need to be taken with food, while others need to be taken on an empty stomach. Having these instructions available can determine the effectiveness of the medicine. Because patients with caregivers may not be able to remember the necessary elements of the medicinal instructions, being able to use the label as a guide is imperative.
Labels will also note if refills are available and if so, how many. It will have contact information for the doctor and an account number or serial number that can be traced back to the prescription ordered. Labels make it easy for the caregiver to keep the patient on track with their treatment goals.
Compliance Convenience
Compliance is when your patient follows through with the recommended treatment plan you created. Patient health goals are more easily met when caregivers can use prepackaged medications in their routine. Together, you and the caregiver can monitor the patient’s intake and measure their outcomes.
Caregivers are motivated to help patients reach health goals. They like to be able to show progress to the physician.
Because you are prescribing prepackaged medicines in your office, you can educate the caregiver. Education is an essential key to helping the patient remain compliant in their treatment.
For instance, you can explain to the caregiver why you are prescribing certain medications, how they help the patient, normal and abnormal side effects to look out for, possible interactions, and the best way to consume the medication.
You can also ask for feedback from the caregiver and give them the chance to express any concerns they may have. Because you are sharing responsibility for the care of your patient, it is imperative the caregiver is on board with your treatment goals. This sets all of you up for success.