An Informal Discussion of Emergency Nurses' Current Clinical Practice: What's New and What Works

Abstract

In response to the 2006 Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations' National Patient Safety (NPSF) goals that prescribe a need to reconcile patients' medications from one encounter to another, many articles, discussions, and postings to various listserves during the past several months have addressed how emergency nurses are meeting this challenge. NPSF goals 8 A and B state that health care providers must “implement a process for obtaining and documenting a complete list of the patient's current medications upon the patient's admission to the organization and with the involvement of the patient” (http://www.jointcommission.org/PatientSafety/NationalPatientSafetyGoals/06_npsg_cah.htm). A complete list of the patient's medications also must be communicated to the next provider of service within or outside the health care organization. Susan McDaniel Hohenhaus is President, Hohenhaus & Associates, Wellsboro, Pa.