Contraindications for medications

You can add contraindications to you medications as they are added to your system.

About Contraindication

A contraindication is a condition or factor that will create a caution message or prevent the administering of a medication in REACH based on the potential harm that it may cause to a patient.

Indications is the reason why a patient is prescribed or is taking a medicine whereas Contraindication is the opposite of an indication, it is a reason why a patient should not take a medicine.

When creating a medication in REACH you can create user defined contraindications that will generate caution alerts or prevention when administering a medication to a student.

Example 1 Panadol will contraindicate with itself if attempting to be administered < 4hrs apart.
Example 2 Paracetamol may contraindicate with some cold & cough mixtures which have Paracetamol as an ingredient.

In medicines there are two types of contraindications:

Relative contraindications means that caution should be used when two drugs or procedures are used together. (It is acceptable to do so if the benefits outweigh the risk.)
Absolute contraindication means that event or substance could cause a life-threatening situation. A medicine that falls under this category must be avoided. There are many medicines should not be used together by the same person.

Reach allows you to set contraindications that are only a warning message (Soft) or contraindications that prevent the medicating of a student (Hard).

Contraindication settings

Contraindications are generally a relationship between two medications however you can also use contraindications to manage minimum time intervals between dosages of a single medication.

A Contraindications message is triggered when the Contraindications Rule is triggered. Relative contraindications can be set to deliver a caution message (soft restriction) whilst Absolute contraindications can be set to prevent a medication from being administered (hard restriction)....

How to configure Contraindications

Click the Add button in the Contraindications section to add contraindications for any medicine.

Select the medication you want to set as the contraindication
Set the Rule Time for the contraindication. This rule works with the logic "if < x hours then" implement the restriction set in (3)
Set the Restriction method (Hard or Soft).
- a Hard restriction will prevent the intended dosage from occurring
- a Soft restriction will provide a caution or warning alert only and will not prevent the intended dosage from occurring
Set the Description. Describe why the contraindication exists or a description of your Rule.
Set the Message. This is the message that will be provided to the user that is attempting to administer the medication to the student.