Abstract

Medication-related injuries are one of the major problems with today’s healthcare. Some common medication errors are inaccurate prescriptions by physicians, medication given to the wrong patient or miscalculated doses. An important part of the medication administration are nurses, who spend about a quarter of their time administrating medication. Since they oversee the last control, checking that the correct medication is being administrated, they can prevent many medication errors from occurring. Their working conditions are far from optimal, characterized by staff shortages and overcapacity which result in a stressful work environment.

This study aims to create a requirement specification of a future system for medication administration. The system will be used for inpatient care and by using a solution called closed loop medication, the system aims to reduce the medication errors as well as reduce the nurses’ workload. Closed loop medication uses electronic verification to eliminate the errors that occur between prescription and administration by ascertain the five rights of medication (five R). These are principles that ensure that the right drug, with the right dose and right the route, is given to the right patient, at the right time.

The methods used for the investigation were observations as well as seminars. The observations demonstrated how the medication administration is carried out today while the seminars were used to investigate how nurses would want the medication administration, based on closed loop medication, to be carried out in the future. The results of the investigation show that nurses have different views of how the future medication administration should be carried out. One significant risk identified by the nurses is how to maintain an effective workflow when events in the earlier steps prior to administration does not work correctly.

Based on the investigation the requirement specification was formulated. One of several important requirements of the future system is that it should be adjustable to the different wards and their needs. The final conclusion is the following: To make sure that an implementation of closed loop medication reaches its full potential, the system must not result in working conditions more stressful for nurses.