I know it has not been that long since my last posting, but I found some information I wanted to share with you. As I was going through my Twitter account, I found that Dr. Jerry Fharni posted an interesting link about pediatric dosing. The article stated that children are not “tiny adults”. It basically talks about how the operational systems used in the pharmacy and the third parties, treat children as tiny adults when it comes to calculate or approve adequate drugs. Also automated dispensing gets really difficult with parenteral medications.
As a student pharmacist, I understand the risk this implies in our line of work. It is clear that assertive clinical decisions are particularly important to avoid medication errors in children. Just like the article says, there is no “one size fits all” when it comes to children and computers try to do just that. It is important to maximize time and man-hours on every practice setting, but not at the risk of our patients. There is no room for error when it comes to children!!!!
Here is the link to the article in case you want to read it:
This is exactly what Dr. Benavides was talking about during our pediatrics asthma lecture. The statement in the article, "We try to make it easier on pharmacists processing orders by intelligently picking what's in the inventory based on what is ordered through CPOE.", is the easiest way to make a mistake when dealing with pediatrics. When dosing children, a lot of variables go in to the "equation". The only way i see technology helping with this is giving pharmacists a guideline to look at and help out with interactions. Sos as you made a great point in that assertive clinical decisions should be made to avoid medication errors. One way technology may help decrease errors is maybe bring up a page when dealing with pediatrics listing what to look for before dispensing the medication.
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