Can patient safety be improved by reducing the volume of "inappropriate prescribing tasks" handed over to out-of-hours junior doctors?

ABSTRACT:

Background

First-year doctors found that during out-of-hours shifts they were being delayed and distracted from reviewing potentially sick/deteriorating patients by a high volume of prescribing tasks. This predominately consisted of oral anticoagulation prescribing and rewrites of drug charts. We hoped that if we could reduce this burden of "inappropriate prescribing tasks", we could not only improve junior doctors' job satisfaction and opportunities for training but also give them more time for patient reviews.

Methods

Three weekends were initially audited to quantify the number of "inappropriate prescribing tasks" using data from the hospital's computerized task assigning system. On three subsequent weekends, a checklist was handed out to the ward teams on Friday mornings.

SUBMITTER: Amis SM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5865568 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature