Dealing with logbook discrepancies
Once a veterinary professional discovers an error in their logbook, what happens next?
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For veterinary professionals that are DEA registrants, discrepancies may appear within logbooks. Sometimes it can be chalked up to human error, maybe someone wrote in the wrong book or maybe someone miscalculated a dosage and wrote down the wrong number. Regardless of how they happened, they need to be dealt with, but what is the correct way to deal with discrepancies?
During an interview at the Fetch Kansas City Conference, Kelley Detweiler and Peter Weinstein, DVM, MBA, explain some common causes as to why these discrepancies can happen, both in the case of human error or human intent, and how veterinary teams can handle it.
Below is a partial transcript
Kelley Detweiler: When it comes to discrepancies, you know it's bound to happen. There are nefarious reasons that they happen, but either way, they need to be addressed. Because if there's a discrepancy, it needs to be resolved or reported, and failure to do that within the 24 hour timeline by DEA and then additional state rules that may have other diversion reporting requirements, it really just messes everything up for the person who's holding the bag. Doc?
Peter Weinstein, DVM, MBA: Discrepancy really happens in veterinary hospitals, most commonly because we're so busy, and math errors happen because we're so busy. Forgetting to enter information happens because we're so busy... I can't tell you how many times a staff member put the wrong information on the wrong log. Sometimes you have to stop, take a deep breath, and move slower, because I think in this case, speed leads to problems and leads to discrepancies. And the concern we have is when those discrepancies are not human error, but human intent, that we have to have greater oversight, and that's our responsibility as veterinarians, and especially the veterinary registrants from the DEA.
