Annals of Disaster Medicine
| ISSN:1684-193X
| Updated July 10, 2002
|
Contents:
June 2002 Vol. 1,
Num. 1 | Benefits
of Personal Digital Assistance in Decreasing Prescribing Errors: Preliminary
Experience from a Tertiary Care Hospital |
Tzong-Luen Wang, MD, PhD; Hang Chang, MD, PhD |
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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 |
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