Medicine wastage in a thromboprophylaxis protocol for ambulatory trauma patients
Intended for healthcare professionals
Evidence and practice    

Medicine wastage in a thromboprophylaxis protocol for ambulatory trauma patients

Sean Mower Advanced Clinical Practitioner, Accident and Emergency Department, West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust, Watford General Hospital, Watford, Hertfordshire, England
Suzan Thompson Senior Lecturer, Social Care and Education, Faculty of Health, Kingston University, Kingston upon Thames, England

Why you should read this article:
  • To understand how enoxaparin sodium could be wasted in a thromboprophylaxis protocol

  • To recognise how much enoxaparin sodium is potentially wasted in a thromboprophylaxis protocol

  • To explore ideas on how medicine wastage in a thromboprophylaxis protocol could be reduced

Thromboprophylactic medicine is provided routinely to patients who present to emergency departments (EDs) with lower leg fractures as a preventive measure against forming blood clots in an immobilised limb. A large amount of medicine is provided to these patients at discharge, but once they have recovered their mobility the remaining medicine is unusable and must be destroyed. There is a lack of data to quantify this waste. This article reports a service evaluation that was conducted in an ED to investigate the wastage and the cost implications of this treatment protocol. It shows that over half the medicine dispensed is subsequently wasted and makes recommendations for changing dispensing practice.

Emergency Nurse. doi: 10.7748/en.2020.e2022

Peer review

This article has been subject to external double-blind peer review and has been checked for plagiarism using automated software

Correspondence

sean.mower@nhs.net

Conflict of interest

None declared

Mower S, Thompson S (2020) Medicine wastage in a thromboprophylaxis protocol for ambulatory trauma patients. Emergency Nurse. doi: 10.7748/en.2020.e2022

Published online: 12 August 2020

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