This guide aims to tell you exactly how medication administration works on the Atlas eMAR app. This is not a 'How-to' - but instead a look into what the app is doing when actions are input by a user.
First a foremost lets consider an example:
Adcal D3 Chewable Tablets - One to be given four times a day.
The round times are 8am 12pm 4pm and 8pm.
The device will prompt these medications are due before each round (showing in red on the device).
When these medications are administered, they will go green on the device to show they have been given.
Now, consider the following complication:
"A Resident is asleep during the 8am round and does not wake up until 10am, unfortunately you are the other side of the home and won't be able to get back round to her until ~11:40am. When you get there you administer her 8am dose."
This type of complication is where we need to talk about device prompts and round time percentiles. On Atlas eMAR we understand that not everything goes to plan within a care home setting. The above example is just one of many complications that can happen during a medication round. That is why we have added in a prompt to our app that asks the user which round they would like to administer against should they happen to need to give their resident medication later on.
There is a little more to how this works exactly however and it has to do with administration percentiles (As shown by the below image)
The image shows a length of time in between rounds (For example 8am and 12pm).
- If the administration of the medication is carried out in the lower percentile of time, the medication will automatically go against the closest round in this case the 8am round.
- If the administration of the medication is carried out in the middle percentile of time, then our app will give you a prompt. It will ask you which round you want to administer against, the 8am OR the 12pm. It is important the correct selection is made here.
- If the administration of the medication is carried out in the upper percentile of time, then the medication will automatically go against the closest round which in this case is the 12pm round.
Considering this information, when thinking about the complication mentioned above, the user will NOT get a prompt for which round to administer against, because the administration time is in the upper percentile of time between rounds. This would mean that the 8am dose according to the app has been missed and that the 12pm round has just been administered. This is what can cause confusion amongst users as when they go to administer the 12pm round later on, they are unable to due to the medication already being in green.
This can cause some confusion, however, if this was not how it worked, a member of staff could administer a medication at 11:45, go on their break and another member of staff would be able to administer again at 12 and this could end up being a fatal issue.
We understand that anything can happen in a care home setting and we hope that this guide and this example can provide some understanding into how and why the app works in the way it does. The safety of our customers and those in their care are always at the centre of what we do.
Our support team are on hand to help from 8:00am to 17:30pm Mon-Fri should there be any issues.