Paper
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
601
Promoting the Family's Role in Medication Reconciliation
Kathy Riley-Lawless, PhD, RN, APRN, BC, School of Nursing, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA
| Learning Objective #1: discuss the importance of the medication reconciliation process.
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| Learning Objective #2: explore strategies to promote the family's role in medication reconciliation. |
Nurses across all practice settings are challenged to obtain accurate medication histories. This information is an important step in the medication reconciliation process and ultimately the prevention of medication errors. Obtaining an accurate medication history is crucial when working with children. As a group, children are at a higher risk then adults for medication errors due to such factors as stage of growth and development, weight variability, and the calculations required for dosing. Confronted by the challenges in obtaining accurate medication histories and the resultant problems with medication reconciliation, nurses and advanced practice nurses in the pre-surgical care center of a children’s hospital conducted a study to discover family identified barriers in the medication reconciliation process. This presentation focuses on the use of these research findings to develop and evaluate interventions that strengthen the family's role in the medication reconciliation process when children with a chronic condition requiring daily medication are admitted for surgery.