The impact of technology on prescribing errors in pediatric intensive care: a before and after study.

Using a pre-post approach, this study assessed the impact of implementing electronic prescribing and smart pump-facilitated standard concentration infusions on medication errors in a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). The overall error rates were similar before and after implementation but the error types changed before and after implementation of these tools. After implementation, lack of clarity, incomplete orders and wrong unit errors were reduced but dosing errors, altered orders and duplicate errors increased. Pre-implementation, 78% of errors were deemed preventable by electronic prescribing and smart-pumps; post-implementation 27% of errors were attributed to the technology and would not have occurred if the order was not electronically created or administered via the smart-pump.