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Topics in this Dawn AC E-Newsletter  

• What is a UPS?

• The Importance of Flagging

•  Update - 12^th Annual User Group – 22^nd November 2004

•  Benchmarking Run Complete

What is a UPS?

Hospital or Facility Engineers usually carry out frequent power backup generator tests. This subjects some computers without uninterruptible power supplies (UPS’s) to power dips and failures.

From the support calls we get, power failures are a frequent occurrence.

If you are using Dawn AC when a power failure occurs there is a risk of damaging or corrupting the Dawn AC database, which could lead to a patient being given the wrong dose instruction.

An UPS gives you time to close down Dawn AC and so avoiding a possible data corruption. An UPS is relatively cheap, well worth the money.

If you know or suspect that there has been a power failure, please run a database check before proceeding to continue to use the system.

We are still also finding customers who do not have at least a daily backup of their Dawn AC database. If you depend on someone else to do your backups, please ensure that they test regularly whether the backup is being properly executed.

If you corrupt your database you need to be able to restore the latest backup or snapshot of your database.

The Importance of Flagging

Dawn AC has an important safety feature to prevent the possibility of inappropriate dose instructions being issued for a patient. 

On selecting the Letters option for a patient, if the Patient is flagged, you are presented with a Warning as shown here. Note, also the diamond shape indicating that this particular patient has been flagged for that visit in treatment history for that patient. What does it mean?  

Here are the six reasons why a patient has been automatically flagged.

1.       The current Dose is zero.

2.       % dose change from previous dose is greater than the limit as set in Percentage Dose Changes via System Keys (The default value is 20%).

3.       No dosing instruction could be found for the patient.

4.       The interval between current and next appointment is greater than the maximum interval allowed by the Target INR Range interval settings plus two weeks.

5.       No next test date has been calculated.

6.       The system could not calculate a dose for the patient.

Of course you can manually flag a patient too.

Update - 12^th Annual User Group – 22^nd - 23^rd November 2004

We are very pleased to have the following provisional speakers 

"NPSA and Safe Medication Practice" Prof. David Cousins, National Patient Safety Agency, UK

"Problem Patient Audit" Dr Anne-Louise Swain, Sullivan & Nicolaides, Queensland, Australia

"The Viennese View" Prof Herbert Watzke, Univ. of Vienna

"Practical Dose Adjustment with Dawn AC" Dr Barbara Krevel, University Medical Centre, Ljubljana

"New Warfarin Dosing Regimen - Influence of Genetics and Environmental factors" Dr Fahrad Kamali, Wolfson Unit of Pharmacology, University of Newcastle

"New Way of Presenting Information to Patients" Mr Rob Speak, Royal Shrewsbury Hospital

I am still seeking speakers and I would welcome any ideas for a short 10 to 20 minute talk on the your use of Dawn AC or any related topic. The meeting is informal and practical and so please do not hesitate to tell your story. Speakers will receive a £75 reduction in the meeting fee. Please call me on 01524 761620 or let me know by email at syd@4s-dawn.com

The User Group is an excellent opportunity to network with other anticoagulation professionals to exchange views and experience. 

If you register for the User Group before the 30^th of September you are entitled to a small early bird saving!

Benchmarking Run Complete 

For those participating in the Benchmarking the results of the last run should now be with you. There were 74 participants with a total of 166,000 patients and 1,250,000 INR results. I also hope to complete the analysis of the Benchmarking Questionnaire survey by late September.

Syd Stewart

End of Newsletter