How are medication resources used? A library and pharmacy department collaboration.

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Ballarat Health Services (BHS) is the largest regional hospital in the Grampians region in Victoria. Medication information access affects clinical staff and currency is imperative to patient safety. Access to drug information needs to be quick, easy to use and accurate. OBJECTIVE: In 2017 the BHS library and pharmacy collaborated to complete a Medication Decision Support Tools Survey for clinical staff to review if drug information was current, accurate and readily available at the decision making point. METHODS: The survey was run in June 2017 via surveymonkey. The questions included: - How often resources were accessed? What features were used? Whether the query was answered? Where a clinician would go for further advice. Ease of use. Suggestions. THEME 3 – CONNECT: CONNECTING STAFF IN THE WORKPLACE RESULTS: Clinicians used a wide range of medicines information with most staff using additional features within products (such as calculators) and generally their query was answered. Several people mentioned using Google if they couldn’t find an answer. There were many comments about educating staff and promoting resources more widely. Overwhelmingly the results highlighted the need for a direct link to medicines information on either desktops or the intranet homepage. A 2015 survey also highlighted difficulties in accessing medicine decision support tools and though changes were made the 2017 survey highlighted that more was needed. CONCLUSION: Recommendations included: educating clinicians on the pitfalls of using Google for medicines information, promotion of resources organisational wide, online list of recommended drug calculators and a direct link to drug resources on the intranet homepage. After discussions with stakeholders and using our survey, a direct link was added to the homepage in September 2017. In just two months hits on the drug resources have grown by over 25%.