For hospitalized patients how does computerized physician order entry (CPOE) compare with common paper system to reduce medication errors during hospital stay
CONTEXT OF CPOE AND MEDICATION ERRORS
Medication errors are issues that surface in the hospital settings. For long, the use of the common paper system for patients’ order entries has contributed to many of the medication errors recorded in the hospital settings. The context in which the use of the CPOEs can be observed is when the use of then common paper system in the medical settings leads to continual medication errors during hospital system. The medication errors could include overlooked allergies and drug interactions, drug overdoses and administration of wrong drugs ("FACT SHEET: Computerized Physician Order Entry Leapfrog Hospital Survey," 2014). These medication errors can occur because of decimal points errors and indecipherable handwritten prescriptions.
DESCRIPTION OF THE CPOE
The CPOE systems are electronic systems of prescriptions that intercept the errors when they commonly occur. With the CPOE, the physicians enter the orders into computers rather than on paper. The orders are integrated with the information of patients including prescription and laboratory data. The CPOE is a design rather than a technology that integrates technological aspects to optimize the ordering of medications by physicians. At the core of CPOE is a system of decision support that is interactive and that base on the hospital regulations. The design uses the systems of clinical support and links to the hospital system to generate alerts and prompts while ordering sessions to notify on potential errors.
The elemental features of CPOE include interaction checking including drug-herbal medicine, drug-food and allergies. Others features include checking for the overlaps with new or active orders, checking for the overlaps with structured, tapered, cascading, standing, conditional and pending orders (Ormond, 2005, p. 3).
IMPACT OF CPOES ON WORK ENVIRONMENT, STAFF QUALITY CARE AND PATIENT OUTCOMES
CPOEs affect the working environments, the quality of care provided by staff and the patient outcome in various ways. Conventionally, these impacts are positive. To the working environment, the CPOEs reduce the healthcare costs because of thee improved efficiency compared to the paper system. Additionally, the design enhances prompts that warn against the possibilities of allergies, overdose or drug interaction. To the quality of care by staff, the CPOE design enhances the provision of current and accurate information that assists the physicians to astir with new drugs as they reach the markets. Additionally, it improves the communication between the pharmacists and the physicians. To the patients, the design assists to eliminate risks of the adverse impacts of the medication errors on them including life-threatening consequences by enabling the flow consistency of drug-specific information, which eliminates confusions among drug names.
CPOE is an effective design and tool for increasing the efficiency in the health care systems. Other benefits of the design include support of clinical decisions, cost-conscious decision-making processes and process improvement in the hospital systems. The CPOE design is significant for the nursing sector because it reduces the medication errors during hospital stays.
PROPOSED SOLUTIONS TO REDUCTION OF MEDICATION ERRORS BY IMPLEMENTING CPOES
CPOEs are elemental to reduce the medication errors in the hospital settings. However, implementation of the CPOEs in the hospital settings continues is a continual problem. Therefore, the proposed solution to this problem is to include high levels of leadership involvements, widespread commitments to CPOE projects, availability of required resources, ready access to technology and comprehensive communication and training (Steele & DeBrow, 0, p. 5).
References
FACT SHEET: Computerized Physician Order Entry Leapfrog Hospital Survey. (2014, January 4). Retrieved from http://http://www.leapfroggroup.org/media/file/FactSheet_CPOE.pdf
Ormond, C. (2005). Computer Physician Order Entry (CPOE) (207-780-4015). Retrieved from Institute for Health Policy Muskie School of Public Service website: http://http://muskie.usm.maine.edu/Publications/ihp/CPOE.pdf
Steele, A. M., & DeBrow, M. (0). Efficiency Gains with Computerized Provider Order Entry.
