Assessment of the Users' Perspectives on the Performance of Electronic Patient's Drug Chart in the Pharmacy Information System

Abstract

Introduction: The targeted application of the technology for the record of the drug information may substantially assist the healthcare service providers supporting the drug-related decisions. This study intended to assess the performance of the electronic patient's drug chart integrated in the pharmacy information system PIS by comparing the users' viewpoints before and after its administration. Methods: This study was conducted using applied and descriptive-analytical research method in 2016. Research population consisted of the nursing staff, pharmacy technicians as well as pharmacists from which a sample of 317 subjects was selected using purposive non-probability sampling method from Nour & Ali Asqar hospital of Isfahan city. Data collection tool was a self-designed questionnaire developed on the basis of American Society of Health System Pharmacists ASHP the validity of which was confirmed by both pooling the ideas of the respective well-known professors and estimating cronbach's alpha that was found to be 82%. The study was conducted in the following three steps: 1 exploring the viewpoints of the users on the development of the electronic patient's drug chart, 2 converting the current drug chart to the electronic format 3 re-assessing the users' viewpoints on the performance of electronic patient's drug chart. The collected data were analyzed using pretest-posttest and paired sample ttest with Spss16 software. As for quantitative variables, the measures of mean score, standard deviation and 95% confidence interval were used. Results: As per the obtained results, there was a significant difference between the mean scores obtained for the viewpoints of the users on four domains in question including the rate of access to the patient drug's information p < 0.001, the patient's demographic information p< 0.005, the patient's complaints and signs information p< 0.001 and patient's medical information p< 0.001 before and after the implementation of electronic patient's drug chart. Conclusion: Based on the results, it can be concluded that implementation of electronic patient's drug chart in the PIS would increase the users' access rate to the drug and medical information. This, in turn, has a positive effect on lowering the illegible handwriting errors, controlling the drug dosage administered and decreasing the medicine waste.