Nurses' behaviors and visual scanning patterns may reduce patient identification errors.

Area of Science:

• Nursing Practice
• Patient Safety
• Human Factors Engineering

Background:

• Patient identification errors during medication administration pose significant risks.
• Effective nurse behaviors and scanning patterns are crucial for preventing these errors.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how nurses' behaviors and visual scanning patterns impact their ability to detect patient identification errors.
• To identify specific behavioral and visual cues associated with successful error identification.

Main Methods:

• Twenty nurses participated in a simulated medication administration task with an embedded patient identification error.
• Eye-tracking technology and behavioral analysis were used to record scanning patterns and process interruptions.

Main Results:

• Nurses identifying errors completed tasks efficiently and exhibited broader scanning across patient ID band, chart, and medication labels.
• Non-error-identifying nurses showed increased off-topic conversations and less consistent fixation patterns on key information sources.
• Error-identifying nurses demonstrated more predictable eye fixation sequences compared to random patterns in non-error-identifying nurses.

Conclusions:

• Nurse training should focus on developing systematic scanning behaviors and minimizing process interruptions.
• Technological tools supporting nurses' medication administration process may benefit from design considerations informed by these findings.