Our MMT service has demonstrated improved medicines supply and management of medicines at ward level. All pharmaceutical technicians providing the MMT service have undertaken or are in the process of completing additional training in medicines management.
The service involves:
- MMT visiting the ward each week-day
- Ordering of both stock and non-stock medications for all in-patients
- Charging all medications on Cliniscript at ward level, and sending picking list to the dispensary printer via Wi-Fi
- Medications are supplied in the original packs without patient names, with some exceptions e.g. methotrexate, blood products, vaccines etc.
- Medications being put in the individual patients slots in the drug trolley by the MMT
- All non-stock medications ordered outside of the MMT service e.g. evenings and weekends are labelled with the patient identifiers.
The MMT service has resulted in improvements including:
a. Average length of time per drug round was reduced by 20% at 8.15am and 16% at 11:30am with the introduction of a MMT. This equates to nine hours of saved nursing time per ward per week. The number of interruptions per drug round was reduced by 23% at 8:15am and 22% at 11:30am.
b. The percentage of missed doses due to unavailable medications was reduced from 2.98% to 1.62%- a 45% improvement.
c. Nurses agreed that the service led to an improvement in the time taken for medications to arrive to the ward after ordering
d. Improved endorsement of the Prescription Chart with location of medicines which is helpful to nurses.
e. Easier to for nurses to find medications on the ward
