Pharmacy tips alert prescribers to common medication ordering challenges and solutions.
Weight-Based Dosing
Challenge: When ordering medication dosing based on weight (e.g., mg/kg), the system will prompt you to enter a weight but will allow you to sign the order with no weight entered. However, a number of issues occur when a weight is not entered when the order is placed, including delays in order verification and delayed patient care.
Context: In accordance with the AHS Medication Orders Policy and Procedures, all weight-based orders require a weight to be entered into the system at the time the order is placed. This is to ensure that all workflows within the system can be carried out as intended, without extraneous workload and workarounds placed on certain healthcare providers.
Solution: In urgent situations where the patient’s actual weight is not known or recorded yet, consider changing the order dosing unit to an absolute dose (e.g., mg) and then calculate the dose manually. Otherwise, an estimated weight must be entered, to allow Epic to calculate the appropriate dose; the order can be modified if needed once the actual weight is known.
When using an estimated weight, in the order composer, enter the estimated weight under the "Order-Specific" weight type. This weight will only be applied to that particular order.
