TTO,S.

I am a third year stuDent nurse doing a project on discharge from
hospital.I have discovered a real problem with the system of tto,s.Is
there a better system out there to stop patients waiting all day for
medication.Any ideas?????

In the good old days TTOs were written and dispensed at least 24hrs
before discharge, after all the patient usually knows days ahead when
they are going home (especially after elective admisssions). However
disorganisation and pressures to achieve throughput have destroyed any
hopes of this continuing.

Other options are using patients own drugs during the admission,
ideally checked by a pharmacist before use. Patients can then take the
drugs home with them without need for TTOs. Added medication such as
analgesia and antibiotics would be dispensed once ready for discharge
by the hospital pharmacy.

If patients own are not available or an option, then one stop
dispensing from admission to and beyond discharge can be considered.

Talk to the pharmacy manager and see what they can do to help. It may
well be that they want to go in this direction to take the pressure of
the dispensary staff. But please, do not go it alone!


Nigel
(Former Chief Pharmacist)

On 26 Sep 2003 11:15:06 -0700, trev@matta5730.fsnet.co.uk (trevor)
wrotd: