PICOT
Among patients provided a prescription for medication at Mount Sinai Medical Center, Miami, FL Hospital(P), does the use of electronic prescription (I) compared to current practice(C) reduce incidences of inaccurate and unreadable prescriptions provided to patients(O) within one month (T)?
Problem Statement
Many doctors have illegible and atrocious handwriting making it a global issue regardless of their designation, position, and specialty (Timonen et al., 2018). According to Brits et al. (2017) unreadable and inaccurate prescriptions cause medical errors that claim the lives of more than 7, 000 people annually in the U.S. An illegible prescription may arise due to many factors such as a busy work schedule which influences doctors to write in a hurry.
Doctors tend to use abbreviations, including popular and non-popular ones, where some are not approved, creating room for confusion (Brits et al., 2017). Handwriting prescription increases the number of calls as pharmacists attempt to seek clarification from doctors before dispensing medicines. Brits et al. (2017) revealed that about 35% of prescribing doctors are not identifiable, making it difficult to make a follow-up or contact them for clarification. This problem is associated with diverse medical errors, including the use of unauthorized drugs, wrong timing, prescribing, wrong dose preparation, as well as administrative issues (Samadbeik et al., 2017). In many cases, pharmacists and nurses are unable to understand the shortcuts that doctors use when writing in a hurry.
Purpose Statement
The purpose of this DPI Project is to implement electronic prescriptions to reduce incidences of inaccurate and unreadable prescriptions provided to patients at Mount Sinai Medical Center, Miami, FL, Hospital. The aim is to test the correlation between electronic prescriptions and incidences of medical error. The misinterpretation problem can be resolved by the adoption of an electronic prescription where every detail is readable. This would enable prescribers to send details to the pharmacy direct, eliminating transcription errors. It would also improve the completeness and legibility of important information (Ribed et al., 2019). These systems would influence the use of decision-support tools, including drug allergy, drug dose, and drug-drug interaction checking. Electronic prescriptions can lower incidences of medication errors by at least 50% and promote patient safety and quality of prescribing (Brits et al., 2017). The outcome would be reduced incidences of inaccurate and unreadable prescriptions provided to patients.
References
Brits, H., Botha, A., Niksch, L., Venter, K., Terblanché, R., & Joubert, G. (2017). Illegible handwriting and other prescription errors on prescriptions at National District Hospital, Bloemfontein. Professional Nursing Today, 21(2), 53-56.
Ribed, A., de Lorenzo-Pinto, A., Lallana-Sainz, E., Llorente-Parrado, C., Chana-RodrÃguez, F., & Sanjurjo-Sáez, M. (2019). Thromboprophylaxis Management in Surgical Patients: The Efficacy of a Protocol in the Electronic Prescription Program.Quality Management in Healthcare, 28(4), 245-249.
Samadbeik, M., Ahmadi, M., Sadoughi, F., & Garavand, A. (2017). A comparative review of electronic prescription systems: Lessons learned from developed countries. Journal of Research in Pharmacy Practice, 6(1), 3.
Timonen, J., Kangas, S., Kauppinen, H., & Ahonen, R. (2018). Electronic prescription anomalies: a study of frequencies, clarification and effects in Finnish community pharmacies.Journal of Pharmaceutical Health Services Research, 9(3), 183-189.