You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Quality improvement
Reducing prescribing errors: making electronic prescribing work for cystic fibrosis inpatients
  1. Emma Rebecca Vittery1,
  2. Emily Bayliss2,
  3. Andrew Heed3,
  4. Claire Fagan4,
  5. Matthew Thomas4,5,
  6. Yincent Tse5,6
  1. 1 Clinical Genetics, Northern Genetics Service, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
  2. 2 Department of Paediatric Pharmacy, Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Trust, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK
  3. 3 Department of Clinical Informatics Pharmacy, Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Trust, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK
  4. 4 Department of Respiratory Paediatrics, Great North Children's Hospital, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK
  5. 5 Faculty of Medical Sciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
  6. 6 Great North Children's Hospital, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Yincent Tse, Lead for Quality and Safety, Great North Children's Hospital, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK; yincenttse{at}nhs.net

Abstract

Children admitted to our hospital with cystic fibrosis had frequent medication errors due to polypharmacy and addition of specialist and high-risk medications despite an electronic prescribing and medicines administration system in place. We describe a multidisciplinary quality improvement project that combined a computerised order entry system (CPOE) with human factor process changes. Over 12 months, our run chart showed a 43% reduction in prescription errors. For medications prescribable via the CPOE, errors reaching the patient reduced from 50% to 29%. Electronic prescribing can be seen by clinicians as a fixed unalterable system contributing to rather than ameliorating errors. Improving safety requires whole team engagement and working closely with programmers to adapt function and influence human factors.

  • information technology
  • pharmacology
  • cystic fibrosis

Data availability statement

Data are available upon reasonable request. Not applicable.

https://doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2021-322446

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Data availability statement

    Data are available upon reasonable request. Not applicable.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Twitter @YincentTse

    • Contributors All authors planned and carried out the project and interventions jointly. AH implemented e-prescribing/CPOE changes. EB carried out all data collection. ERV and EB carried out all analysis. ERV lead on writing the manuscript with input from all authors, particularly MT and YT.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.