A review of the role of electronic prescribing in nurses' medication errors

Introduction: Drug therapy is one of the most powerful tools in the treatment of diseases and at the same time drug errors are recognized as a major type of medical errors that are increasing day by day and cause side effects and endanger the patient's safety. Such that statistics show medication errors affect one in 10 hospitalized patients.Electronic prescription is a special type of prescription using information technology (IT). The aim of this study was to review the role of electronic prescriptions in medication errors. Methods: The present study is a review study that was conducted in 1399 with a time limit. Related articles are collected by searching for the keywords Medication errors, Medication, Electronic Prescription in the Persian and English databases Google Scholar, Science Direct, Springer and then articles that were in the period between 1399- 1394 (2016-2020) selected based on criteria such as the similarity of the variables of these articles with the present study, the novelty of the articles and the compatibility of the information technology systems used in them with the current systems that are currently in use. After studying the articles found, a general conclusion was extracted from all articles and finally the present study was written by merging the results of all articles studied in this field. Results: Finally, 9 articles in Persian and English related to the subject were found, of which 6 were selected according to the mentioned criteria and studied. The results of the studies indicate that prescribing along with recording accurate patient information such as age, sex, weight, pregnancies, other diseases and allergies reduces medication errors. In paper prescribing, reasons such as illegibility of the prescription written by the doctor may cause errors in the name, dose, way of use and course of treatment of the drug and endanger the patient's safety.Capabilities of electronic prescribing systems, including the ability to type prescriptions, accurately record the dose and duration of treatment, calculate the dose according to age and conditions for drugs that need to be calculated by the nurse, and the presence of drug interactions and allergies cause full compliance with “5 correct” principle. These 5 items are: patient, the drug, the time, way of use and the correct dose. This minimize the errors of drug therapy. On the other hand, electronic prescribing reduces the cost of medication and allows remote prescribing while physicians have access to the patient's electronic file, saving time and paper consumption, as well as reducing the cost ofproviding health services. Conclusion: Paper prescribing is a time consuming, costly and most importantly process with a high percentage of medication errors. However, electronic prescribing is an effective tool that increases the quality of services provided and reduces medication errors. Therefore, providing the infrastructure of this technology for integrated use in the entire health care system is recommended.

کلیدواژه ها:

Medication ، Drug Errors ، Electronic Prescription