SPEEDIER delivery of medicines to patients in St Cross Hospital is now possible thanks to new high-tech automated medicine cabinets.
The hospital’s Urgent Care department, Cedar Ward, Oak Ward, Mulberry Ward, Hoskyn Ward and Day Surgery have each received the state-of-the-art cabinets following a successful roll-out of the system at University Hospital Coventry in 2018.
The cabinets, supplied by specialist healthcare company Omnicell, are designed to improve patient care by automating the time-consuming process of delivering medicines.
As well as giving pharmacy and nursing staff more time to spend with patients, the cabinets also allow improved security and full traceability of medicines in the hospital.
The new system also means patients will miss fewer doses, and medicines are ordered automatically so they are less likely to run out.
Mairaide Varney, lead nurse for quality improvement at St Cross, said: “This is a really exciting development for St Cross and we are confident that it will lead to greater efficiency and us being able to provide even better care for patients by being able to spend more time with them.
“The high-tech cabinet allows nurses to access their stored drugs via fingerprint access and records transactions against individual patients. The benefits are designed to speed up the drug availability process and provide increased time to patient care.
“We have already seen better stock availability as it alerts the pharmacy if we are running low of any medicine. This enables a much more efficient use of our time and we have had some really positive feedback so far.”