Ashtons Reviews 6

Ashtons are in my view incompetent. A nurse where I am ordered some inhalers four days ago and they have not been delivered. I understand and appreciate that yesterday was a bank holiday, but this is not a valid reason for the medication not arriving. Ashtons can’t be trusted to deliver extremely important medications, and should have their licence to trade revoked.

Ashtons eWorks, an electronic prescribing and medicines administration (EPMA) system has been a revelation in our hospice, we have been using it now for over 12 months and it has reduced our error/incident rate (which was already very low) even further.

We have 10 in-patient beds, and the system is so easy to use, even our most technophobic nurses have picked it up with ease.

Prescribing for syringe pumps / continuous subcutaneous infusions is a dream and many of my secondary care colleagues who have observed this, remark how easy this is, compared with other EPMA systems.

We are able to use the remedies function within eWorks to ensure our monitoring processes are administered timely and the discretionary list (essentially a template for prescribers to authorise use e.g., for anticipatory medications) further allows us to tailor care to our individual patients as per NHS NICE Guidelines.

Initial setup and targeted training was excellent and in all my dealings with Ashtons, I have found them polite, responsive and most of all effective.

I would have no qualms in recommending eWorks to hospices like ours and I honestly wished we had made the move to an electronic system sooner.

The system is good and has prevented medication errors within the service. However there are some improvements which could be made which would make the system even more easier to navigate. It would be good if a running tally of how much medication is in stock and an alert on when to reorder. Also it would be helpful if you received a notification when someone has replied to a dialogue.

E-works is working well for our hospital. We are really pleased we switched over to E-works.

We made an excellent decision to move away from paper records and fax machines, to the Ashtons EPMA. Throughout my many dealings with everyone involved in this project I found the whole Ashtons team to be really reactive to all of our questions, requests for information and on the odd occasion we have had to speak to their Helpdesk we found them to be extremely quick to provide a working response. The training they provided before the package was introduced was pitched at just the right level.

My biggest concern was that our nursing staff may have difficulty moving from paper to an electronic system; but following the training sessions I was amazed to find they all liked it and have all been extremely complimentary.

In summary, I personally feel that our move over to the Ashtons EPMA was the right decision to make; we should have done it sooner!