A team at Royal North Shore Hospital is on a mission to improve the care of patients living with Parkinson disease with a new project focused on improving medication management for patients. 

The Parkinson Inpatient Experience Redesign Project, led by Parkinson nurse Sue Williams and pharmacist Marissa Sakiris, is being rolled out across RNSH.

The project’s goal is to achieve better health outcomes, experience of care and service efficiency through excellent inpatient medication management for Parkinson patients.

Marissa said Parkinson patients have highly individualised medication regimens, and ensuring they receive medications in hospital is critical to symptom control. 

“It is crucial that these medications are administered on time by nurses, are prescribed accurately by doctors, and are reviewed efficiently by pharmacists – it is a team effort,” she said. 

Sue said the project has derived six solutions that are being implemented across the hospital. 

“We have begun implementing electronic prompts for nurses, an electronic prescriber alert, a medication label alert, formalised identification of Parkinson patients, education for staff, and increased imprest supply of Parkinson medications,” she said.

Sue said staff caring for Parkinson patients should look out for prompts in the electronic medical record.

“Nurses should look out for order comments on the medication administration record and should administer Parkinson medications on time to prevent the administration tile from turning red, which will now occur after 15 minutes, as opposed to one hour,” she said.

“Doctors should look out for an alert to promote accuracy when charting Parkinson medications.”

The project will continue to be rolled out throughout 2022.