Date of Award

Spring 5-7-2021

Document Type

Scholarly Project

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

Department

Nursing

First Advisor

Kristi Frisbee

Second Advisor

Mandi Alonzo

Third Advisor

Karen Johnson

Fourth Advisor

Neal Schmidt

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to implement a quality improvement project for medication reconciliation in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of a Midwestern hospital. This project was conducted by surveying the twenty-two nurses, four pharmacists, and one medication reconciliation technician regarding their view of barriers to why medication reconciliations are not always done at admission to this unit. Data was collected that revealed the number of patients admitted to this ICU prior to the implementation of the project. Then a quality improvement project was initiated. The first step was to re-educate the staff on the proper steps of entering the medication reconciliation into the patient’s chart through the electronic medical record on admission. A step-by-step guide was printed and left at each workstation for later reference. Two admission tasks were added to the EMR to serve as a reminder for the nurses to complete the medication reconciliation at admission and to notify the admitting provider that the reconciliation was complete. Three months passed and then data was again collected for the number of patients admitted and the number of medication reconciliations completed at admission. After the quality improvement project, the percentage of medication reconciliations actually decreased. This ICU experienced a surge of pandemic patients during this project.

Included in

Nursing Commons

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