1ISG-009 Optimising non-clinical drug management processes through root cause analysis

<h3>Background and Importance</h3> Inefficient hospital drug management processes negatively affect professionals and patients, leading to excessive time spent on non-clinical tasks and reducing time for direct patient care, potentially affecting clinical outcomes. Conducting a thorough error analysis to identify root causes is essential for providing insights to effectively optimise these processes. <h3>Aim and Objectives</h3> We aimed to identify causes of inefficiency in non-clinical management of hospital pharmacy drugs, analyse overall errors, and ascertain the most impactful causes. Future phases will develop solutions to streamline processes and reduce time lost on non-value-adding tasks. <h3>Material and Methods</h3> Reiterative doubts regarding non-clinical drug management were detected among physicians, nurses, and pharmacy technicians through daily routine activities, with the pharmacy department keeping a record of the queries received. The responses provided by the pharmacists were heterogeneous. A cause-effect diagram was constructed, based on the Ishikawa/6M methodology, which systematically identified and categorised primary factors contributing to inefficiencies, thereby facilitating evaluation and development of innovative solutions. <h3>Results</h3> Five key process parameters were analysed, with subcategories for each. Weaknesses identified were: Information sources: a) Outdated information b) Reliance on subjective professional knowledge. Environment a) Fragmented information b) Restricted accessibility c) Lack of cross-functional integration. Technology a) Outdated formats (e.g: paper, pdf) b) Unavailable on-line actualisation. Training a) Insufficient training on available resources b) Lack of awareness regarding administrative processes. Methodology a) Communication channels among professionals improperly established b) Centralisation of issue resolution within pharmacy staff, leading to work overload c) Delays in receiving required reports. After subsequent validation with a multidisciplinary team, based on clinicians’ perceived impact, inadequately established communication channels, unawareness of information sources and insufficient cross-functional integration of data systems were identified as critical. The 5-why methodology was applied to validated primary causes, leading to identification of the root cause. <h3>Conclusion and Relevance</h3> This root cause analysis highlights the urgent need to transform our current information ecosystem and develop new, integrated data management tools. Improvement measures will be proposed and prioritised based on the ICE (impact, confidence, ease) scoring system. More efficient information-gathering processes will facilitate the establishment of streamlined work methodologies, allowing healthcare professionals to focus more effectively on patient care and clinical tasks. <h3>References and/or Acknowledgements</h3> <h3>Conflict of Interest</h3> No conflict of interest