Medication Bar-Coding Effectiveness Varied

 

A new study found medication bar-coding affected different types of administration errors in different patient care areas. Bar-coding decreased administration errors in med/surg units but not in ICUs, when time errors were excluded.

The researchers from UCSD Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, La Jolla, Calif., measured bar-code effectiveness in two med/surg units, one medical ICU, and one surgical ICU of a 386-bed academic teaching hospital. Nursing staff were observed administering medications one month before and three months after implementation of bar-code technology. Medication administration accuracy was measured using the accuracy indicator of the California Nursing Outcomes Coalition.

After bar-code implementation in the med/surg units, improved adherence to patient identification policies was observed, but more distractions of the nursing staff occurred and the medications administered were less frequently explained to the patient. Although an increase in wrong-time errors was observed in the med/surg units, the total number of medication errors did not change. When wrong-time errors were excluded, the rate of medication errors decreased by 58%. In the ICUs, the charting of medication administration improved after bar-code implementation, but total medication errors and wrong-time errors did not change.