| The main purpose of this quasi experiment research was to evaluate the effectiveness before and after using the Hospital Information Management (HIM) computer program in the in-patient ward at Phusing hospital, Srisaket. The study compared the incidence of medication errors by using a self-administered report, which was collected 3 months before and after using the program from 1 October 2006 to 6 September 2007. The data on satisfaction in this program was also collected using self-administered questionnaires from 3 physicians, 3 pharmacists,
3 technicians and 12 nurses. In addition, duration of working in each medication process was also determined 10 days after using HIM program. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics together with Chi-square and paired t-test.
The results revealed that after using HIM program, the overall incidence of medication errors were significantly declined. The prescribing errors, pre-dispensing errors, dispensing errors and administration errors were all significantly decreased to 0.17, 0.41, 0.09 and 0.07% (p-value = 0.0009, 0.0009, 0.0009 and 0.0009 respectively). The numbers of prescriptions with medication error were also declined to 6.29% (p-value = 0.0009). Moreover, the severity of medication errors from level B, C and D were statistically decreased (p-value = 0.0009, 0.0009 and 0.0009 respectively). In terms of satisfaction before and after using the program, the results showed that satisfaction of physicians was significantly indifferent (p-value =0.549), while satisfaction of pharmacists, technicians and nurses were statistically improved (p-value =0.010, 0.003 and 0.0009 respectively). For duration of working in medication process, the results indicated that mean time duration for treatment and prescribing was 3.34 ± 1.26 minutes per case. Time duration for pharmacists to access the order and print the label, time for technicians to prepare for distribution and time for pharmacists to recheck before distribution were 2.59 ± 0.99, 2.02 ± 1.02 and 1.70 ± 0.65 minutes per case respectively. In addition, the duration for nurses in each process was 202.91± 5.89 minutes per day.
In conclusion, the Hospital Information Management computer program reduced medication errors and increased the satisfaction of pharmacists, technicians and nurses except the physicians. |