Reflections, progress, plans, and learning points about my residency project
Project Title:
The Impact of a Formalized Medication Reconciliation Process in the Emergency Department
What is the focus of your investigation?
Primary objective- Baseline study-quantify & characterize home medication discrepancies without proactive reconciliation within 24-48 hours of triage. Then compare the number of discrepancies in the baseline study to the number of discrepancies found when proactive medication reconciliation is done in the pilot study.
What was your approach and/or what evidence have you gathered?
Researched PubMed, CJHP, Safer Health Care now
Update Aug 21, 2009 of Project Proposal
Update Dec 14, 2009:
I have been working for the last 6 days in Emergency at RJH on our study. So far I have 19 participants. This has not been easy, many patients declined to enroll which was surprising to the preceptors and myself. Many patients were feeling unwell and were overwhelmed by the length of the consent form and refused to participate. To try and increase participation in our study I read the consent form out loud and this worked to increase the rate of enrollment. Over the next 4 days I hope to reach our N of 28 and if possible reach our goal of 35 patients.
Update Dec 18, 2009:
Today was my last day collecting baseline data. I was able to recruit 30 patients and complete follow up on all of them. I think this last 2 weeks has gone really well. We have had 17 patients decline to participate for numerous reasons listed above and for feeling ill, being unable to give consent or just not wanting to participate. I think I have learned lots about the difficulties of prospective research but have also learned how much fun it can be. I have really enjoyed the patient contact, practicing my interview skills and continuing to gain practice writing clinical chart notes. I have also gained more insight into the challenges of Med Rec in an environment such as emergency.
What Results have emerged
