Clinicians should avoid ordering medications that may interact harmfully with others already in use. A pharmacist should review all medication orders to check for any potential drug interactions the clinicians may have missed. Computerized systems can help: drug interaction software can quickly alert a prescriber or reviewing pharmacist or nurse about potential conflicts at the moment a medication’s name is entered. A good software program can perform the checks and make the alerts more quickly and reliably than a manual system.
Tips
- Ensure that the software is updated regularly with the latest medication interaction information.
- Monitor overrides of the system, which may indicate other problems in the ordering procedure.
