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| ISSN:1684-193X | Updated July 10, 2002 |
Annals of Disaster Medicine
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Contents: June 2002 Vol. 1, Num. 1 | |
| Benefits
of Personal Digital Assistance in Decreasing Prescribing Errors: Preliminary Experience from a Tertiary Care Hospital | |
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Tzong-Luen Wang, MD, PhD; Hang Chang, MD, PhD | |
| Abstract ---To prevent errors made during the prescription of drugs, we try to understand if the personal digital assistance (PDA) can have such benefits. Between January 1 2001 and March 31 2002, we surveyed the prescription orders from the intensive care units (ICUs) of a 961-bed teaching hospital and also prospectively analyzed any potentially serious prescribing errors. The PDA was introduced into prescription system in January 1 2002. Before the use of PDA, the total prescribing errors are 1,505 among the overall 144,481 orders (1.04%). Those errors can be categorized into five main factors, including work environment (670 events, 44% of total errors), team problem (190, 13%), individual factors (410, 27%), task problems (147, 10%) and patient factors (88, 6%). After the PDA era, the incidences of total prescribing errors decreased significantly compared to those before PDA use (0.58% vs. 1.04% before PDA, P<0.001). Further analysis revealed that the decline in errors due to problems of work environment (31%), team (4%) and tasks (5%) were the main contributing factors. As to the real incidences, there were significant decline in the factors concerning physical environment (0.3? vs. 0.7?, P<0.05), staffing (0.3? vs. 2.1?, P<0.001), communication (0.0? vs. 0.4?, P<0.05), responsibility (0.1? vs. 0.6?, P<0.05), protocols (0.0? vs. 0.4?, P<0.05) and no routine pathways (0.3? vs. 0.7?, P<0.05). In conclusion, the PDA can diminish at least half of the common factors affecting prescription errors and also decrease half of the incidences. (Ann. Disaster Med 2002;1:20-28) | |
| Key words---PDA; prescribing error; critical care |
