WAY Collaborative promotes self-care Are you making Medication errors

Winston Churchill said, “The only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself.” Unreliable statistics make it hard to know how many people die each year due to medication errors. How many more are taking harmful drug combinations or the wrong doses? The numbers are elusive because medical professionals don’t want to showcase errors and consumers may not realize their mistakes.

Yet, errors happen many ways and at different points.

It’s like the telephone game where people take turns whispering a message into the ear of the next person in line. When the last person speaks the message out loud, it has changed along the way. It’s a game that teaches how important details get altered when passed from person to person. The same is true as medication moves through production, packaging, labelling, dispensing, and use. It’s no game, and mistakes happen.

Doctors, nurses, and pharmacists are stretched thin. It used to be dangerous when handwritten notes in patient files were illegible. Now errors can occur from a typo. A shift change by nurses elevates risk.

Some medical tragedies from mixed up medications are impossible to miss. Heartbreaking cases of infants administered the wrong medication are more common than you might imagine. So are situations where an elderly patient dies after being given the wrong drug or the wrong dose.

Naan Instant Flat Bread

Ok, I admit it, I’m on a mission: to convert budget conscious folks to the benefits of leftovers. Another way of using leftovers is to inventory what’s hanging around in your fridge and prepare an instant recipe from a staple we always keep around the house: Naan bread. From the time that we enjoyed Naan bread in Indian restaurants to today when you can get this delectable bread over the counter pretty well anywhere, we have blessed the day we found it. We usually get a stash at Costco and keep ‘em frozen. So today’s recipe involves using Naan bread with whatever you have left around the house.

Naan Instant Flat Bread

Ingredients

However many Naan breads you need to feed your family or guests

Optional coatings, for example:

• Tostitos salsa

• Tomato sauce or pizza sauce

• Tzatziki

• Chipotle mayo

• Your favourite BBQ sauce

Optional fillings:

• Diced chicken

• Thinly sliced ham or salami

• Any other protein you have around, including bacon and back bacon

• Or, go vegetarian with anything you choose (try cooked asparagus spears)

Topping: any firm cheese that you can grate, including:

• Mozzarella

• Cheddar submitted by Jenny Read North Grenville’s WAY (Wellness Access for Youth) Collaborative wants to spread the word that July 24 is International Self-Care Day, a day to recognize the importance of self-care for our mental and physical health.

“Self-care includes anything that we do to care for our physical, psychological, and emotional health,” said Dan MacKinnon, the Navigator for WAY, a collaborative made up of service providers who provide, refer, and support mental health and addictions services for children and youth aged 12 to 25 years of age in North Grenville.

“Self-care is about taking time to do things you enjoy or that make you feel better, especially when you feel stressed,” MacKinnon added, “like riding a bike, playing music, or connecting with friends.”

7/24 – the day chosen for International Self-care Day – reminds us that we experience the benefits of self-care 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.

“Self-care can help you manage stress, lower your risk of illness, and increase your energy,” said Lorena Crosbie, Executive Director of Children’s Mental Health of Leeds and Grenville, a founding WAY partner. “Self-care is linked to improved mental health, self-esteem, self-worth, and optimism.”

Crosbie noted that while summer brings warm weather and a long break from school, the lack of routine and daily interaction with friends can be stressful. For children and youth experiencing mental health challenges over the summer, help is only a phone call away. Calling 1-866-741-1WAY (1929) provides access to the services of all of the WAY partners.

WAY can help with mental health, substance use health, food insecurity, housing, employment, transportation to appointments, and more. WAY can also connect parents and caregivers to help through PLEO – Parents’ Lifelines of Eastern Ontario.

For more information about WAY, visit http:// www.kdh.on.ca/WAY/

Find out more about how to de-stress with self-care at https://www.camh.ca/-/media/files/gcschools-self-care-infographic-pdf.pdf.

Accepting that “to err is human,” most hospitals, pharmacies, and care homes have layers upon layers of seemingly foolproof protocols, protections, and checks. But still, when people get tired, stretched, or sloppy, the best safety measures are not enough.

Medication mistakes are frequently called into poison control centres by consumers at home. What are the common crises? Husbands have taken their wives’ pills. People take their medication twice. Parents can’t tell how much medication they’ve succeeded in getting down the throat of a screaming child. Hundreds of thousands of these situations occur every year.

Labeling and dosage instructions can be confusing, and the print too small to read. Common abbreviations are among the cause of some errors. Micrograms (µg) can be mistaken for milligrams (mg) leading to an overdose. The Latin abbreviation for every day (Q.D.) can be confused with the shortform for every other day (Q.O.D.)

It's challenging enough when dealing with only one medication. When multiple medications are used it gets more complicated. How many readers engage in “polypharmacy”? It can refer to getting medications from more than one pharmacy or using more than one medication to treat a single problem. But most commonly, polypharmacy refers to the use of five or more medications at the same time.

This is not the time for complacency. You are not being rude by asking questions. You should ask for clarification until you understand completely. Take all your medications with you – or an accurate list of them with the doses you are using – to every visit with a healthcare practitioner. Use only one pharmacy. Communicate any effects of changes in medications. Dispose of old medication correctly.

If you or someone you know struggles to manage the timing and dosages of medications, reach out for assistance. A recent survey found that over two-thirds of low-income individuals taking medications daily are not taking them properly. They tend not to tell their doctor or they don’t have someone available to answer their questions. We can do better to help.

The safest way to avoid medication errors is comparatively easy. Do everything you can to avoid getting sick. It was Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, who said, “The greatest medicine of all is teaching people how not to need it.”

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• Havarti

• Monterey Jack

• The list goes on but doesn’t include soft cheeses...

• And, some Parmesan when serving to “seal the deal”

Preparation

1. Warm your Naan bread slightly in the MW, particularly if you are starting from frozen

2. Choose a coating and spread it on the surface of the Naan bread

3. Choose a filling and place your choice generously on the coated Naan bread

4. Choose a cheese, grate it and sprinkle on your emerging flat bread

5. Pop in the microwave for about a minute or until the cheese is melted

Bring these to the table with a Parmesan shaker. Serve with a nice cool ale: fast and certainly very tasty. Somehow, I imagine a pool table...Enjoy!

Feedback always welcome. Talk to me at pcormier@ ranaprocess.com.

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