IN THIS ISSUE
	Seasons Greetings Special Offers  Benchmarking Chocolate may prevent Blood Clots The Future for Drugs

	HO HO HO MERRY CHRISTMAS...     ...From all the staff at 4S. We wish you a happy holiday and all good fortune for 2007. We do really value your business and would like to say thank you to you all.

Existing customers should have received a letter indicating attractive price discounts available until 28th Feb 2007 on certain specialist modules. If you do not receive this letter in the next week or so, please email sales@4s-dawn.com.

If you are finding it a struggle gaining funding for anticoagulation care - maybe an in-house risk assessment could get you noticed by your management. Any issues you find in your risk assessment, put on your organisations risk registar and management will be spured into action!

In primary care, anticoagulants are one of the classes of medicines most commonly associated with fatal medication errors. In secondary care, warfarin is one of the ten drugs most frequently associated with dispensing errors.

The NHS Litigation Authority has reported that medication errors involving anticoagulants fall within the top ten causes of claims against NHS Trusts.

The National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) carried out a risk assessment with a multidisciplinary group on the use of anticoagulants in the NHS. High risks were identified that contributed to the high incidence of patient harm with anticoagulants. One of these risks was that not all staff who prescribe and monitor anticoagulants have received the necessary training and have the required work competencies

For Dr Clough's, Consultant Haematologist, Countess of Chester talk write up on How to Assess the Competence of your Dosing Staff follow the link:            

http://www.4s-dawn.com/dawnac/CloughWrite.htm   

Software does reduce the risk of harm to patients, by approximately 40% when compared to completely manual management by an experienced healthcare professional, because of the warnings or alerts issued by the software to users. DAWN AC v7 is certainly improved from previous versions, in terms of its now high visibility and configurability.

Also when we are developing DAWN AC, we carry out a risk assessment on each aspect of the product (Failure Mode and effects analysis FMEA)

If software is used correctly and warnings are heeded, the instruction is printed, without manual transcription, straight into a patients book or onto a letter, and an independent check is made of the dose instruction before issuing to the patient, the risk is reduced by approximately 2000% overall when compared to complete manual management by an experienced healthcare professional. For more information on carrying out risk assessments please  Click Here                 

Two tablespoonfuls of dark chocolate a day is good for your health!!

The chemical in cocoa beans has a biochemical effect similar to aspirin in reducing platelet clumping. 

Therefore, eating a little bit of chocolate or having a drink of hot cocoa as part of a regular diet is probably good for personal health, so long as people don't eat too much of it.

Good news just in time for Christmas!!

To read more of this article please follow the link: http://news.uk.msn.com/printarticle.aspx?cp-documentid=1270310 

In a randomised trial of the drug, dabigatran, more than 2000 patients found it as effective as Lovenox at preventing venous thromoembolic events. There was no significant difference in all-cause mortality or bleeding risk

But the drug was only given for only six to ten days and follow up was for only three months, and it isn't yet clear whether dabigatran will turn out to have liver toxicity.

To read more of this article please follow the link: http://www.medpagetoday.com/tbprint.cfm?tbid=4680