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Study shows PDAs reduce prescribing errors

Ambulatory Safety Monitor, May 26, 2005

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A new study intended to determine the impact of personal digital assistants (PDAs) for Ambulatory Computerized Physician Order Entry (ACPOE) on avoiding potential medication prescribing errors in primary care and office-based practices showed that PDAs are an effective means to reduce errors of legibility, omissions, and use of abbreviations and symbols on prescriptions.

The study compared hand-written prescription orders to prescriptions printed through use of a PDA. Omission of patient age or birth date when using a PDA fell from 95.5% to 59.2%. The percent of illegible prescriber signatures fell from 76.6% to 17.7%, illegible prescriptions dropped from 9.1% to 2.7%, and the use of symbols also declined, from 76.6% to 47.4%. Declines were also noted in omission of dosage form, illegible patient name, unclear prescriber identity, and omission of prescription refill status.

"The PDA offers an effective tool to bring prescribing safety to primary care office-based practices," according to the study researchers. However, they note that use of the PDA in the study was highly varied in adoption and use, with some doctors selected to use the PDA for the study who did not use the device at all.

Creighton Health Services Research Program of Creighton University in Omaha conducted the study, with support from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

To learn more about the study, click here.

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