Like all healthcare providers, Lancashire Teaching Hospitals must store medicines under conditions that assure their quality until they are used or administered. Monitoring the temperature in ambient storage areas, fridges and freezers is essential to give assurance that medicines are being stored at the correct temperatures and is in place to ensure regulatory guidance.
Throughout the trust on ward areas the temperature of the room or fridge is monitored on each working day using a calibrated maximum-minimum thermometer. This is reliant on a member of staff completing a manual reading and recording the storage temperature and the maximum/minimum temperatures. Staff are also responsible for resetting the thermometers daily and reporting if any temperatures are outside the accepted ranges so actions can be taken to address this.
On the emergency department Royal Preston Hospital (ED RPH), there are a total of 11 temperatures required to be recorded daily over six areas – six ambient temperatures and five medicine fridge temperatures. Compliance is monitored via the monthly medicine safety audits completed by the pharmacy medicines governance team.
RPH commenced a three-month trial of CoolCheck with Kelsius for temperature monitoring to meet its compliance requirements.
Benefits of the implementation
- Quality control – protecting the integrity of the products.
- Cost and reduced product wastage. When temperature deviations occur outside of safe limits (2-8⁰C), compromised medication stock may need a shorter shelf-life applied or be completely scrapped for sensitive medication.
- Reliability – real-time, web-based temperature monitoring.
- Accuracy – reducing errors and inaccuracies. Manually observing and recording temperatures is prone to error. The digital nature of the system means that there is no record falsification or retro altering resulting in a transparent and tamper-proof solution.
- Traceability – live data history available online.
- Accountability – assurances that appropriate actions have been taken and documented as they are recorded in the system.
- Productivity – the removal of time-consuming paper trails with staff time being freed up to complete other duties.
Result
The system was trialled over a 15-week period. Within that timeframe the area can demonstrate 100% compliance with temperature monitoring of medicines within the department. The medicines safety audits completed within the department have also seen a significant increase in compliance as a result, with three consecutive months of improvement. The advantages of the system being implemented can be demonstrated through potential cost savings and increased compliance and assurances regarding medicines.
