Laura Mercer completed an internship at Heartland Healthcare Services, an institutional pharmacy supporting nursing facilities. She identified two problems: nurses and pharmacists spent too much time calling facilities about IV medication orders, and orders were not being forwarded to the IV department, causing delays or need to ship medications. To solve this, she developed fax forms for common IV medications and had stamps made saying "IV MED" to label orders. She trained employees on the new processes. While the forms reduced call times, facilities still needed reminders to fully use the new stamp process. The internship provided experience in a non-hospital healthcare setting and working with a variety of staff.

8. HCA Courses and Key Points