Evaluation of Methods to Measure Production Pressure: A Literature Review

Production pressure is a major contributor to the occurrence of medical errors. Production pressure is the demand on health care professionals to increase the quantity of work at the expense of quality.

The purpose was to summarize the state of the science on measuring production pressure in health care settings so that evidence-based strategies could be identified that minimize medical errors.

This was a literature review. The electronic databases PubMed, Embase, and Scopus were queried using the keywords "work pressure" or "production pressure."

Production pressure is often measured with quantitative approaches that measure efficiency, staff workload, capacity utilization (number of hospital beds occupied), or psychometric instruments. Ethnography is a qualitative method that is also used to assess production pressure.

There were several strategies identified to minimize the impact of production pressure on the occurrence of medical errors. These strategies can be categorized as administrator, educational, or workflow related.