Identifying an important drug interaction

Summer means hot dogs, fireworks, swimming and for hospitals it means a new batch of residents.  Although working with new residents can be challenging at times, new practitioners offer a wonderful opportunity to test our clinical decision support systems that are in place to help improve patient care.  By definition, new practitioners have little practice experience and rely on decision support alerts to avoid drug interactions and medication dosing mistakes.  Additionally, residents often embrace new technology and can be a driving force as we strive to achieve meaningful use of our health information systems.

Rather than the usual, "here we go again" attitude toward working with new residents, this is the time to ensure that the clinical information systems we have in place are based on clinical practice guidelines and can improve patient care.  Ultimately, these new practitioners can be the strongest advocates for adopting this new technology provided the drug interaction, dosage range checking and duplicate therapy alerts that we bombard them with help improve patient care.