Alaris Drug Pump Update

The Alaris Drug Pump has undergone changes in the past few months to better serve staff and increase patient safety.

Carol Luppi, RNC, BSN, nurse educator, Nursing Professional Development, said the recent updates are thanks to a multidisciplinary effort. She explained that over 11 days, staff from the Biomedical Department, Equipment Pool and Nursing upgraded the software for 860 controllers and hardware for 1820 pumping modules. Alaris personnel were flown in from California to perform the hardware safety upgrades.

“Everyone had to locate and manually update the equipment; that would not have been possible without the cooperation of the entire nursing staff and the principal efforts of Paul Lohr, supervisor, Equipment Pool, and Kristin Schaefer, Biomedical Engineering,” said Luppi.

This most recent version of the drug library includes drug entries in an Anesthesia Shelf that was customized for BWH anesthesiologists. The shelf will reduce the risk of anesthesia drug administration error and assist with compliance with JCAHO and hospital policy.

Also, the drug library now iincludes entries to be used during hands-on device training with nurses, who are new to BWH. A training drug entry can now be selected to instruct nurses on the proper use of the Guardrail® safety features of the pump.

The Alaris pumps provide valuable quality data to caregivers. Luppi and Jon Silverman, PharmD are working with the Center for Excellence in identifying ways to optimize data sample sizes and analyze the large amount of data acquired in the recent upgrade. “The recent upgrades provide us with statistically significant amounts of data for patient safety initiatives and drug library changes,” said Luppi.