Redesigning From Work-as-Imagined to Work-as-Done: A Systems Safety Approach to Bedside Medication Storage.

Purpose: This quality improvement study aimed to address challenges in medication storage and accessibility in an acute pediatric care setting. By examining current processes, improvement opportunities were identified to enhance medication availability and reduce errors by introducing new locked med...

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Publicado en:Journal of Patient Safety Vol. 22; no. 4; pp. 334 - 340
Autores principales: Kuntz, Kerri, Nare, Matthew T., Assee, April, Pabst, Damon, Dierking, Sarah, McDonnell, Jennifer, Fouquet, Sarah
Formato: pictorial research Journal Article
Publicado: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Jul2026
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      dt: Jul2026
      vid: 22
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      pub: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
      place: Baltimore, Maryland
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        194635845
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        10.1097/PTS.0000000000001472
        194635845
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        atl: Redesigning From Work-as-Imagined to Work-as-Done: A Systems Safety Approach to Bedside Medication Storage.
      aug:
        au:
          Kuntz, Kerri
          Nare, Matthew T.
          Assee, April
          Pabst, Damon
          Dierking, Sarah
          McDonnell, Jennifer
          Fouquet, Sarah
        affil: Quality, Safety, and Human Factors, Children's Mercy, Missouri
      sug:
        subj:
          Patient Bedside
          Drug Storage Methods
          Medication Systems
          Medication Errors Prevention and Control
          Safety
          Quality Improvement
          Pediatric Care
          Acute Care
          Health Services Accessibility
          Pediatric Nursing
          Human
          Female
          Adult
          Hospitals
          Multidisciplinary Care Team
          Descriptive Statistics
          Simulations
          Teaching Methods
          Workload
          Confidence
          Scales
          Workflow
          Time and Motion Studies
          Program Evaluation
          Task Performance and Analysis
          Ergonomics
          Knowledge
          Convenience Sample
          Male
          Summated Rating Scaling
          Adult: 19-44 years
          Female
          Male
      ab: Purpose: This quality improvement study aimed to address challenges in medication storage and accessibility in an acute pediatric care setting. By examining current processes, improvement opportunities were identified to enhance medication availability and reduce errors by introducing new locked medication storage boxes for multiuse, patient-specific medications. Methods: This quality improvement study was conducted in a 38-bed medical-surgical unit at a large Midwestern pediatric hospital. The study consisted of 3 phases: preintervention, simulation, and postintervention. Preintervention included near miss frequency counts, bedside medication audits, time observation audits, and a knowledge survey. The simulation phase involved in-situ simulations over 2 shifts with ten nurses (n=10), measuring success rates, task completion times, workload, and task difficulty and confidence ratings. Postintervention activities repeated the initial measures collected during the preintervention phase. Results: Participants showed a higher task success rate (94.6%) for the work-as-imagined procedure compared with a work-as-done (60%) and intervention (89%) processes. Overall, the intervention process decreased perceived workload according to the unweighted NASA-Task Load Index (NASA-TLX) scores and decreased task time compared with the work-as-imagined storage process. Confidence in task completion was highest for work-as-imagined, with a slight decrease in difficulty for the intervention or work-as-done. Conclusions: This study underscores the importance of identifying and addressing gaps between organizational policies or standard operating procedures and actual practices while engaging frontline staff. The implementation of new medication lockboxes significantly improved the medication storage process, demonstrating the effectiveness of quality improvements methods in enhancing both safety and efficiency. These findings highlight the value of a collaborative, systems-based approach in driving meaningful improvements in health care settings, ultimately contributing to better patient outcomes and operational efficiency.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype:
        pictorial
        research
        Journal Article
      ougenre: Article
    language: English
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