Jayaram, G., Doyle, D., Steinwachs, D., & Samuels, J. (2011). Identifying and Reducing Medication Errors in Psychiatry: Creating a Culture of Safety Through the Use of an Adverse Event Reporting Mechanism. Journal of Psychiatric Practice, 17(2). Retrieved from http://journals.lww.com/practicalpsychiatry/Fulltext/2011/03000/Identifying_and_Reducing_Medication_Errors_in.2.aspx.

This journal article reviews the implementation a two electronic systems, the Patient Safety Net (PSN) (an error reporting system) and of the Provider Order Entry (POE) program (a prescribing system). The results of this study saw an 88% decrease in prescription errors as a direct result of implementing this system, as medical errors relating to human factors (i.e. handwriting illegibility, prescriber fatigue) were nullified.

“(Article authors) educated and trained staff in (system) use, conducted concurrent chart reviews to estimate true error reduction, and provided continuous feedback as errors occurred. The intervention described here resulted in a reduction in MEs (medical errors) in association with performance improvement efforts that were conducted over 5 years and involved 65,466 patient days, and 617,524 billed doses, which is the largest study of an intervention to reduce psychiatric medication errors reported to date.”