Last week I presented the results of the audit project I've been working on in the hospital where I work as part of the monthly medical division clinical governance meeting. Audit is an important process whereby everyday practice is compared to the ideal standards and practice. I wanted to audit prescribing of gentamicin in the hospital. It is an antibiotic which has nephrotoxic and ototoxic effects if given in high concentrations. Monitoring of blood levels is very important to ensure safe prescribing and levels should ideally be documented on a monitoring chart, with the dose calculated based on the patient's weight and renal function. Duration of treatment should not exceed 72 hours except in exceptional circumstances. I audited this process and found that in more than half of cases at least one of my outcome measures were not being completed correctly. In these patients, it was more likely that renal function would be affected, leading to my suggestion that patients will directly benefit form improved compliance with these monitoring protocols. The plan is for a new gentamicin prescribing and monitoring chart to be introduced in the hospital in August 2012 which will hopefully improve compliance. There's a lot coming up over the next couple of months (the wedding,
portfolio hand-in etc) so I'd imagine that posts on here are going to be
a bit more sparse over the next while. More to follow...
