The impact of introducing bedside medication verification on the incidence of medication administration errors

The administration of medication in an acute care setting is a fundamental role of a registered nurse and is the last step in the medication process. In 1999, the Institute of Medicine published a hallmark report; To Err is Human, which exposed the significance of preventable medical errors in U.S. hospitals across the country. The findings of this report promoted the demand for improvements in the delivery and safety of healthcare. The healthcare industry has begun to turn attention to the utilization of technology to promote the delivery of safe care. This study looked at whether the technology, bedside medication verification (BMV), had an impact on medication administration error (MAE) rates comparing errors prior to and after the implementation of the technology. BMV is a technology that allows the nurse to scan a medication, which is linked to an individual’s electronic medication administration record, and then scan a patient specific barcode worn by the patient. This technology has the capability to alert the nurse that the medication scanned is for the correct person, at the correct dose, time, and route. The results from this study showed a decrease in the total number of reported MAE (122 pre- compared to 68 post-) following the implementation of BMV in an acute care setting. More significant was the decrease in errors per patient day following the implementation of BMV, 9.2 to 4.8. While results from this study are promising that the implementation of BMV decreases overall error rates, the results did observe an increase in wrong dosing (pre- n=14 or 11.5% compared to post- n=22 or 32.3%) and wrong drug (Pre- n=4 or 4.1% compared to post- n=4 or 5.9%). The findings from this study suggest that the implementation of BMV/EMR, during medication administration, can decrease the overall number of medication administration errors.