Error rates in medication verification and administration tasks, under all three conditions
| Task | Number of nurses committing error (%) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Preintervention experiment | Postintervention experiment | ||||
| Condition 1: uninterrupted (n=18) | Condition 2: interrupted (n=18) | Significance (Condition 1 vs 2)* | Condition 3: interrupted (n=19) | Significance (Condition 2 vs 3)† | |
| Medication verification tasks (assessment of error detection) | |||||
| 1. Verifying medication name | 3 (17%) | 6 (33%) | No (p=0.160) | 4 (21%) | No (p=0.319) |
| 2. Verifying medication dosage | 4 (22%) | 4 (22%) | No (p=0.595) | 1 (5%) | No (p=0.153) |
| 3. Verifying medication volume in syringe | 9 (50%) | 16 (89%) | Yes (p=0.003) | 11 (58%) | Yes (p=0.038) |
| 4. Verifying medication volume in AIP | 10 (56%) | 17 (94%) | Yes (p=0.002) | 11 (58%) | Yes (p=0.012) |
| 5. Verifying patient ID | 7 (39%) | 6 (33%) | No (p=0.591) | 6 (32%) | No (p=0.593) |
| Medication administration tasks (assessment of error commission) | |||||
| 6. Intravenous push | 8 (44%) | 16 (89%) | Yes (p=0.02) | 6 (32%) | Yes (p=0.001) |
| 7. Pump programming and infusion initiation | 0 (0%) | 7 (39%) | Yes (p=0.03) | 1 (5%) | Yes (p=0.017) |
*McNemar's χ2 test (within-subjects analysis).
†Fisher's exact test (between-subjects analysis).