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Here is a 'Mark your Calender' notice and 'Call for Abstracts for the Imagine 2007 Nursing Conference, which is being coordinated by the PHC Nursing Councils. This day is a great opportunity to spotlight all the work being done by PHC Nurses in different areas. We encourage all nurses who want to share their work to submit an abstract, regardless of whether they have ever presented before.
Click to enlarge:
Starting next Tuesday, November 14th we will start switching two of our Heparin Products to different formats.
Heparin 10,000 unit/mL (5mL) multidose vials will be switching to single dose 1mL amps same concentation of 10,000 units/mL. For the Wardstock Techs when making the switch please consider that 5 doses were available from the multidose vial and only 1 dose from the new single dose amp so multiply the quantity given by 5. I will not be making the switch in RxTFC until Tuesday morning so on Tuesday the 5ml vials will still appear as wardstock but will be switched out of RxTFC that day. The switch will happen over the weekly top up schedule so as you come across wards over the week that carry the 5mL vials please switch them out with the amps at that time.
The other switch will be the Heparin 100 units/mL (10mL) vial to a Heparin 100 units/mL (3mL) Preloaded Syringe. Please see memo attached from Jocelyn Hill & Steve Barnes regarding this. For the wardstock Techs we again will be making the switch over the regular top up schedule next week. The CNL's were notified and suggested that at SPH the bottom drawer on the med carts could be used (where mini-bags are kept now) and at MSJ the second bottom or bottom right hand deep drawer could be used on each med cart for storing these on the "wardstock" side of the carts.
Please be aware that the Heparin Syringes look similar to the Saline syringes they have now so please make sure they are put in separate drawers. I will stock the Heparin Lock syringes today in RxTFC so the wards that will be stocking them will have them listed next week. We have tried to best estimate usage by ward but we may have to continue to adjust quotas as we figure out usage by med cart.
If you have any questions please contact myself or Steve.
Thanks,
Ian Quinn
Technician Manager
Pharmacy Department, Providence Health Care
1081 Burrard St, Vancouver, BC V6Z 1Y6
Ph: 604-806-8185
Fax: 604-806-8154
Internal Pager: 54178
External Pager: 604-205-8602
Here is a 'Mark your Calender' notice and 'Call for Abstracts for the Imagine 2007 Nursing Conference, which is being coordinated by the PHC Nursing Councils.
This day is a great opportunity to spotlight all the work being done by PHC Nurses in different areas. We encourage all nurses who want to share their work to submit an abstract, regardless of whether they have ever presented before.
Where: St. Paul's Hospital Cafeteria, 4th Floor Providence
Building
In the New Year, Dianne will hold staff forums across Providence to
discuss some of the key topics surrounding health care today. During
these forums staff will be able to ask questions about issues of concern
to them - whether they are regarding changes at the provincial level or
issues at specific Providence sites. More information on these forums
will be distributed at a later date.
PLEASE POST FOR YOUR STAFF
Your Unit / Area has been identified as an area that uses heparin (100 units/mL) in a 10 mL "green" vial for CVC flushing.
In an effort to reduce the risk of medication errors, eliminate partial vials and wastage, while also reducing preparation and administration time for nursing staff, these vials will be replaced with:
Pre-filled syringes of 3 mL heparin 100 units/mL (in a 10 mL syringe)
These syringes will be used for non-tunneled (Arrow) and tunneled (Hickman) CVCs. In situations where 5 mL of heparin 100 units/mL is required, i.e. Implanted Venous Access Devices (Port or dome), two syringes are to be used.
Stock of the vials on the units (i.e. in the medication carts, etc.) will be removed and replaced with the new pre-filled syringes starting Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2006. The goal is to have all stock of the syringes in place by the end of the week - Friday, Nov. 17, 2006. Pharmacy will be responsible for continued stock levels of the syringes on the units.
Please contact Jocelyn Hill (Local 62693) if you have any problems or concerns.
Hello all.
Another successful Nursing Education Forum - PEP!
The information presented at the Nursing Education Forum - PEP are now on line. To view the material please follow the path below on the intranet.
PHC intranet site - Programs and Services - Nursing - Education - Education Materials and Resources - PEP Presentations - Fall 2006
Candy
Candy Garossino, RN, MSN
Director, Nursing Education
Providence Health Care
1081Burrard Street, Vancouver V6Z 1Y6
552 Burrard Bldg, St. Paul's Hospital
604-806-8265
Health Records is pleased to report that after six months of chart scanning, there are now over two million documents available online. This provides better support of patient care. While this is a tremendous accomplishment, we still have much to do to improve both the viewing experience and our internal operations.
On November 15th, we will be upgrading SoftMed software with a new version to address some known deficiencies. Please see the screen shots below for an illustration of the following changes:
Changes to this form include:
* renaming the form to acknowledge the prescribing privileges of various disciplines enabled by the Health Professions Act; please refer to the formulary http://phcconnect/program_9713/subprogram_9719/index.htm for specific policies regarding medications and their ordering
* a listing of unsafe abbreviations known to be commonly implicated in medication errors and their safe alternatives to be used when writing medication orders
* deletion of the Automatic Stop Order listing; this information can be accessed from the formulary at the hyperlink above
* a listing of anti-infective doses and current costs on the reverse of the form to support the cost-effective prescribing of these agents
The decision to delete the "Antibiotic Orders" form was based on the safety advantage of using a common, chronological order process for all medications. With the deletion of the "Antibiotic Orders" form, clinicians may find it challenging to isolate the names, durations, sequence, and combinations of anti-infective agents used in an individual patient from their healthcare record. Therefore, Pharmacy has created a report that will allow the printing, in chronological order, of all anti-infective agents prescribed for an individual patient during their current admission; please contact the Pharmacy to request this report (entitled "PHC Anti-infectives All Orders") for a specific patient.
Please do not hesitate to contact me, or Suzanne Tytler (604-682-2344 x.62956) if you have any questions.
Fruzsina Pataky
Regional Medication Safety Coordinator
VCH-PHC Pharmacy Services
Phone: 604-875-4111 x.67607
Mobile: 604-551-7888
What is Code Silver?
Code Silver will be called in the event of a sys-tems failure. These systems can include electric-ity, water, vacuum, medical gases, suction, eleva-tors or computer systems.
Many of these systems (e.g. water) are located in one facility, but with the increase of computer sys-tems in use throughout PHC, some Code Silvers may affect multiple sites at the same time.
Sequence of Events
The Call Centre is notified regarding the system that is down. They will then notify the Incident Commander (who is the Clinical Coordinator, the Site/Ops Leader or designate until relieved by the Leader On-Call).
The notification is then sent out from the Call Centre via the P.A. with the name of the service and location (e.g. "Code Silver - Suction - Area)".
Roles
Incident Commander - Notify the Leader On-Call and Senior Leader On-Call; establish the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) as required; request briefings from Security Leader, Physical Plant, and Nursing as required.
Call Centre - Contact Incident Commander; Leader On-Call; Physical Plant; Emergency Pre-paredness and Communications. Continue paging at intervals.
Staff - Follow EPP procedures for the system that is down. See procedure guides on PHC Connect. Depending on the situation, you may need to re-port back to your work area, check on pa-tients/residents to assess the situation and/or report problems to the EOC.
Security - Follow EPP procedures for the system that is down. See procedure guides on PHC Con-nect.
Depending on the type and degree of the system failure, other groups may need to play a role (e.g. IMIS, Shift Engineers).
What improvements have been made to this process over this last year?
After a number of major computer system out-ages, IMIS will be working with each area to re-fine the downtime procedures for each system.
The Emergency Preparedness Committee is also reviewing each system and putting in place plans to test the response for each area.
Commonly Asked Questions and Answers
Q. How does Code Silver affect me?
A. Depending on which system has failed, it might affect the care that you provide.
Q. What if the computers are down? How can I access the Code Silver Procedures Guide on PHC Connect?
A. In case of computer server failure, updated hard copies of the Emergency Preparedness Plan are kept in the Emergency Operations Centre.
Where do I find more information on Code Silver?
The above listed actions are just a general guide. For more detailed information, please see the Emergency Preparedness Plan on PHC Connect at:
PHC - Emergency Preparedness Plan
1. The SCM diet order entry and summary screen has been updated. The default texture and fluid fields no longer appear in the diet summary. An example of the summary screen is below:
2. Please send all diet orders and requests for diet changes via Sunrise Clinical Manager (SCM) to ensure that patients receive the correct diet and orders are documented. Due to the processing time for each diet change, please keep in mind the following guidelines:
Meal Diet office needs order by:
Breakfast 6:30 am
Lunch 10:30 am
Supper 3:30 pm
Any orders entered after 1030am will have a scheduled date/time of 1930 allowing diet orders to continue to print in the diet office.
3. The Diet Order screen has 2 new diet fields added for Renal diets: HD-Renal (for hemodialysis) and PD-Renal (for peritoneal dialysis).
If you have any questions/concerns, please contact the SCM pager at 54188.
FLU CLINICS
St. Paul's Hospital
Outlined below are the dates and times for the standing flu clinics in Dining Rooms 1 & 2:
Dining Rooms 1 & 2 Times
6 November/06 07:30 - 16:00
7 November/06 10:00 - 14:00
8 November/06 07:30 - 13:00
9 November/06 10:00 - 16:00
16 November/06 07:30 - 13:00
17 Nov/06 in Dining Room 3 09:30 - 12:30
20 November/06 13:30 - 16:00
28 November/06 07:30 - 13:30
The roving clinics will be held on the following dates, times and locations:
Roving Clinics Times Locations
10 November/06 09:00 - 13:00 All Units
14 November/06 08:30 - 09:30 Emergency
10:00 - 11:00 OR and PAR
11:00 - 12:00 ICU, CCU, CSICU
13:00 - 14:00 Pharmacy (Prov 1)
14:00 - 14:30 Phys. Plant, BioMed
15 November/06 09:00 - 10:00 SPD
10:00 - 10:30 Lab (SPH)
11:00 - 12:00 Lab (UBC)
13:30 - 15:00 Hornby 4th Floor Cafeteria
16 November/06 13:00 - 14:30 Radiology
23 November/06 09:00 - 13:00 All Units
24 November/06 09:00 - 13:00 All Units
