Pillboxes and the pharmacy’s sachets¶
When the house prepares the residents’ medicines in advance, each dose is prepared by a nurse and checked by another, before the round distributes it. When the pharmacy prepares them in a sachet per moment, the sachets are received in the house and followed until they are used or go back.
Turning it on¶
Pillbox tracking is a setting: Nursing Care → Configuration → Settings, Track the pillboxes. Once it is on:
each dose records who prepared it and who checked it;
a care assistant gives only a dose that was prepared and has no issue; a nurse who gives an unprepared dose prepares it on the spot;
a dose with an issue, or missing, is blocked for everybody until it is prepared again.
Switched off, nothing of this page shows: no Pillboxes tab, no Pillbox Issues counter, no Tomorrow’s Pillboxes link.
Preparing and checking at the desk¶
From the Medicines workstation, Tomorrow’s Pillboxes (or The Pillboxes in the Pillboxes tab) opens tomorrow’s doses, resident by resident, in the order of the day. Opening it places tomorrow’s doses when they were not yet. The filters Today, Tomorrow, To Prepare, To Check, Issues and To Take Out narrow the list.
Select the doses you put in the box and click Prepared: they are prepared now, by you.
Another nurse selects the doses checked against the treatments and clicks Checked. The doses you prepared yourself are left aside, and the message says what remains and why.
A dose that does not match: Report an Issue — Wrong medicine, Wrong dose, Wrong moment, Dose missing, Dose in excess. The dose is blocked.
Put it right, then click Prepared Again on the line: the check is to be done again.
The Filled In column says who filled the box: The house or The pharmacy. A line is red when it has an issue or must be taken out, green once checked. Nurses and physicians do these gestures; a care assistant sees no pillbox button.
On the phone too
The same preparation and check are done in the care app, on the Pillboxes screen of the round. A dose prepared on the phone shows here, and the other way round.
When a treatment changes after the preparation¶
The medicine, the dose or the route changed: the dose gets the issue Changed after preparation and is blocked until it is prepared again.
The moment moved, the dates or the frequency changed, or the treatment was stopped or suspended: the prepared dose is To Take Out of the Box. Take it out, then click Taken Out. The workstation lists these doses under To take out of the pillboxes.
A medicine missing when filling the box (Missing From Stock) enters the pharmacy’s basket. See Pharmacy orders.
The pharmacy’s sachets¶
When the pharmacy prepares the medicines in a sachet per moment:
In the Pharmacy’s Sachets on the treatment says which medicines the sachets hold. A liquid, an as needed medicine, a dose prepared at the moment or a medicine marked Never in the Pharmacy’s Sachets stay with the house.
The sachets are received in the care app, on the Pillboxes screen: the delivery date, the days covered, the lot or series number printed on the sachet and the number of sachets. The doses they hold are marked as prepared by the pharmacy.
The deliveries¶
From the workstation, Pharmacy’s Deliveries (in the Pharmacy tab) or the Pharmacy’s Deliveries smart button of a resident lists the deliveries: resident, pharmacy, Delivered On, Sachets Until, Use By, Lot / Series, Still to Give, To Return and the state Received, Recalled or Returned. Filters: Received, Past the Use-By Date, Recalled, Returned. A delivery is never created by hand at the desk.
Lot Recalled — every delivery of the same lot in the house is recalled: the doses they still hold are blocked and their sachets go back.
Returned to the Pharmacy — choose the reason (Treatment stopped, Resident in hospital, Resident deceased or gone, Past the use-by date, Lot recalled, Other). The tab Sachets Going Back lists the sachets that leave, with what replaced them.
Return Slip — the PDF to hand over with the sachets: resident, pharmacy, lot, reason, the sachets returned, and the signatures.
A returned sachet is never given again: it is the dose that returns to prepare. The pharmacy’s new sachets take it, in whatever order they arrive, or a nurse prepares it with Prepared Again. The workstation shows Sachets to give back to the pharmacy as a line to do.
In Belgium
The pharmacy’s sachets must be used within fourteen days of the delivery, weekends and public holidays pushed to the next working day, and a split tablet stays with the house: see Medication rules in Belgium.