AHRQ Patient Safety Network ► In the struggle to overcome alert fatigue following medication orders, one interesting new technique is alerting clinicians when their orders differ from their usual ones.

AHRQ Patient Safety Network

In the struggle to overcome alert fatigue following medication orders, one interesting new technique is alerting clinicians when their orders differ from their usual ones.
Woods AD, Mulherin DP, Flynn AJ, Stevenson JG, Zimmerman CR, Chaffee BW. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2014;21:569-573.

Clinical decision support for atypical orders: detection and warning of atypical medication orders submitted to a computerized provider order entry system.

Woods AD, Mulherin DP, Flynn AJ, Stevenson JG, Zimmerman CR, Chaffee BW. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2014;21:569-573.

Medical informaticists are still struggling with how to appropriately tailor warnings within computerized provider order entry systems in order to avoid alert fatigue. This preliminary study showed that identifying atypical orders—orders for common medications that differed from providers' previous orders for the same medication—may be a promising way to prevent prescribing errors.

PubMed citation 

Available at AHRQ Patient Safety Network