Implementation and Evaluation the Effectiveness of the Bar-coded Medication Administration System in a Medical Center Kuan-Jui Tseng, RN, MS1, Rung-Chuang Feng, RN, PhD candidate1,2, Shin-Shang Chou, RN, DNS1, Shir-Ling Lin, RN, MSN1, Hsiu-Fang Yan RN1, Hsiu-Ya Huang, RN, MSN1 1 Department of Nursing, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taiwan; 2Institute of Health Informatics and decision-making, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei Taiwan Abstract The aim of study was to implement and evaluate the effectiveness of the BCMA systems in medical center. A convenience sample of totally 48 medical-surgical units and 800 staff nurses were recruited to evaluate the systems in 2010. The nurses’ perception of the BCMA/eMAR systems were accorded with clinical procedures, guarded the accuracy of patient identification and medication administration processes, and greater than 70% of nurses were willing to use the BCMA/eMAR systems . Introduction Barcode medication administration (BCMA) and electronic medication administration record (eMAR) technologies were two ways to improve inpatient medication safety by automating the process of medication checking, and making the medication administration record electronic. However, medication error is preventable; in order to prevent the medication error caused by human factors and to improve patient medication safety, many hospitals attempted to introduce information technology to assist the first line staff performing patient identification and medication administration process, unit dose packing and patient’s barcode wristband and barcode canning system were the most popular solution among various types of information technology. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a Barcode Medication Administration system and the nurses’ perceptions of the usability of the system and the patient safety in clinical settings. Methods This study was used a simple descriptive research design and a convenience sampling method was conducted, 48 medical-surgical units and 800 staff nurses were recruited. The data was collected through three different aspects; First was direct observation; 10 trained clinical observers who directly observe the steps of nurses using the BCMA system to administrate medication in 20 shifts each, the second aspect was calculated the rate of using scan patient’s bar-coded wristband to perform patient identification, the data was collected for 3 days the HIS dataset; The third part was using a 52-question on-line questionnaire survey and collected nurses perception of the BCMA system, included usability(26 items), usefulness(19 items), Medication administration safety procedure(5 items), intravenous infusion procedure(7 items), and user experience and evaluation(6 items), 7-point Likert scale was designed and score was from strongly agree (=7) to strongly disagree (=1). The study was started from January to December, 2010. Results The validity of medication administration procedure: The 217 shifts direct observation survey were performed and results was found that the validity rate of medication administration was 96.77%, the validity rate of drug identification was 36.24%, and the completed rate of SOP four steps was73.39%. The validity of barcode scanning: The results showed 263(87.96%) nursed followed the BCMA standard of operational procedure scanned the patient’s wristband to identify the patient, and only 36(12.04%) nurses against the SOP in clinical practice. Technological evaluation: Research findings the total mean of the questionnaire was 5.02 points (SD=1.12). The category with highest score was " medication administration safety procedure "(Mean:5.50, SD:1.03), followed by "Usefulness"(Mean=5.19, SD=1.12), "Intravenous infusion procedure"(Mean=4.86, SD=1.13), "Usability" (Mean=4.79, SD=1.21), "User experience and evaluation"(Mean=4.77, SD=1.12). 70% of nurses were willing to use the BCMA system. Conclusion Generally, the BCMA system was succeed in patient identification and medication accuracy, and the nurses perceived the system as middle to high level of useful and ease of use, the nurses hold a positive view and willing to use BCMA system.

NI2012: 11th International Congress on Nursing Informatics 416