TITLE:
Study of Factors Affecting Medical Incident: 1. Dispensing
AUTHORS:
Yuka Miyachi, Chika Nakayama, Kazuyo Nagashiba, Kou Kinoshita, Masayuki Takeuchi, Masafumi Ohnishi, Hiroko Saito, Taeyuki Oshima
KEYWORDS:
Dispensing Error, Eye Tracking, Pharmacist, Supply Processing and Distribution
JOURNAL NAME:
Pharmacology & Pharmacy,
Vol.9 No.12,
December
20,
2018
ABSTRACT: In recent years, medical institutions have taken a
variety of measures to prevent medical incident. In addition, progress has been
made toward the development of a fully automated system for the purpose of
medicine dispensing. However, automating the dispensing, or having it replaced
by artificial intelligence (AI) will not, eradicate human error. Thus, measures
against human error will continue to serve as an important topic. Therefore,
hospitals are required to improve the efficiency of the pharmacy department.
For these purposes, attention has now shifted to Supply Processing and
Distribution (SPD). In this study, we measured for the gaze of the pharmacist
and SPD, and examined the factors affecting dispensing error; moreover, we
examined prevention of the human error. In the results of the eye tracking, SPD
members tended to spend a greater number of gaze time and gaze counts, for each
medicine, on “medicines” and “picking lists,” than pharmacists. On the other
hand, when pharmacists picking medicines, they performed various work
operations in parallel, such as checking the prescription and looking the next
shelf location. It was conjectured that SPD members had more clearly defined
items to check when picking, compared to pharmacists. This may have possibly
led to a lower chance of dispensing errors being introduced by SPD members.
These results suggest that the process of selection is not a mandatory
requirement of pharmacists during the action of dispensing. Instead, SPD
members, pharmacy assistants, or automatic dispensing devices could serve as
substitutes for picking. It is suggested that pharmacists should spend more
time and effort on prescription inspection, medicines checking and dosing
operations.