Streamlining Pre-Med Flow: Enhancing Efficiency and Patient Care in Your Clinic
Suggested Flow for Pre-medicating:
Dogs
Once the weight and the maturity of the patient are put in, pre-medication doses are auto-populated in HQ. The drug drawer (either the veterinarian or a licensed vet tech) will then draw the appropriate premedication drugs into a syringe, place a fresh needle onto the syringe and pass the syringe of premedication off to the veterinarian. The veterinarian will then give the premedication intramuscularly to the canine patient. If your clinic is not entirely paperless, a scribe may mark the time and amounts of which drugs were given on the physical treatment sheet.
The drug drawer will mark the drugs as given and the examination as done, allowing the patient to move over to the next screen for the team to begin pulling up induction drugs.
Cats
Cats may or may not receive a premedication; for example, the ASPCA does use gabapentin as a premed for cats. Pre-meds can be drawn and logged in HQ the same way if administered.
Kgs vs Lbs
By default, HQ is set up to calculate drug doses based on kilograms (kgs). If your clinic prefers to go by pounds (lbs), you’ll need to change this setting in Settings > Clinic Preferences and untick the “Use Kilograms Instead of Pounds” checkbox.
The weight input screen automatically converts kgs to lbs and vice versa.
Auto-generated drug charts
Once the drug protocols are set up in Patient Flow Settings, they will auto-generate the dose for each patient. The pre-med can be drawn following this dose.
To note the pre-med in HQ, follow these steps:
- Verify the weight and age of the patient are entered.
- Click Drugs > Given.
- In the popup, note the amount of each drug drawn. Be sure to verify you are pulling from the correct bottle numbers. If there is no textbox under “Amount”, you need to open a bottle. Click Open New Bottle.
- Click Save.
- To push patient to the next tab, click Done.
Tip: Pre-med times given are time stamped in Patient Flow.
Troubleshooting:
“No drugs setup for this animal weight”
- Go to Settings > Patient Flow Setup > Drug Charts / Protocol Setup > (select species) Protocol.
- Verify your drug has a chart under the Pre-Med Drug Charts section. If not, follow this guide to set it up.
- Verify the chart includes the weight of the patient you are attempting to record. You may need to edit or create a new chart if the weight range is missing.
- If the chart is there and the weight range is included, check that the chart is enabled. If you see a green “Enable” button, the chart is currently disabled.
Open New Bottle: Add More Bottles
If a drug has no closed bottles available to be opened, you’ll need to go back to Settings > Patient Flow Setup and add/manage the controlled bottle inventory. More on that here.
