Electronic Prescribing Usability: Reduction of Mental Workload and Prescribing Errors Among Community Physicians

Abstract

Background: Medical errors are common in hospitals, and research is always needed to find ways of reducing these. This study attempts to address three gaps in this field. First, the factors leading to the reduction of mental workload and its relationship with the reduction of prescribing errors by improving electronic prescribing (e-prescribing) usability have not been empirically examined before. Second, the past research in the field of e-prescribing usability lacks robust theoretical models. Third, there are no existing studies to examine the direct influences of user interface consistency and error prevention with the reduction of mental workload and prescribing errors. Materials and Methods: A quantitative survey method was used to collect data from 188 community physicians. The partial least squares path modeling technique was applied to analyze the data. Results: Prescribing errors were reduced by improving the information quality, user interface consistency, system ease of use, and mental workload reduction. Mental workload is reduced by ease of use, error prevention, and consistency. No significant relationships between prescribing error reduction with error prevention and also between information quality with mental workload reduction were found. Conclusions: The designers of e-prescribing should improve the error prevention and consistency of the system and make it easy to use if they wish for the system to reduce users' mental workload. They should also improve the system information quality, ease of use, and consistency if they claim that their system reduces physicians' prescribing errors. The system should also reduce users' mental workload to meet this objective.

E-health system characteristics, medical performance and healthcare quality at UNRWA-Palestine health centers

“…These results are in line with what previous studies concluded. These results agreed with Cohen et al (2016), Ali and Younes (2013), Peikari et al (2015), Safdari et al (2014), Etezadi-Amoli and Farhoomand (1996) and Shah and Peikari (2016) that concluded positive impact of IQ on PF. Moreover, Ali and Younes (2013) emphasized the mediation of both PE and PU between IQ and PF.…”

“…This result harmonized with Cohen et al (2016), which concluded negative effect on medical staff performance and productivity due to issues in response time, reliability, and form input size limitation of the studied system and partially harmonized with Ali and Younes (2013) in the part of the mediated effect of both PU and PE. However, other previous studies such as those by Ali and Younes (2013), Safdari et al (2014) and Shah and Peikari (2016) contradicted with current study result and found that SQ has significant positive direct impact on PF. This could be attributed to the nature and quality of the system they studied and that the issues caused the negative impact did not show up in their studies.…”

Best Paper Selection

“…Both studies draw the lessons for evidence-based sustainable solutions and discuss areas for research of teamwork. Three of the candidate best papers [14][15][16] carried out rigorous evaluations to examine the usability and/or the efficacy of different HIT solutions. These studies highlight the need for multiple and mixed methods for more relevant and impactful HFE research.…”

Trends and Progress in Human Factors and Organizational Issues in 2016: Learning from Experience

“…This novel methodology allows not only the assessment of systems but also supports experimental research purposes. Schnittker R, Schmettow M, Verhoeven F, Schraagen JMC Combining situated cognitive engineering with a novel testing method in a case study comparing two infusion pump interfaces Appl Ergon 2016;55: [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] Infusion pumps contribute to patient care but several adverse drug events have been associated to their use. Many of those use-related hazards were related to user-interface design deficiencies.…”