Dose Verification Errors in Hospitals: Literature Review of the eMAR-based Systems Used by Nurses

The effectiveness of the dose verification features of the electronic medication administration record (eMAR) and complementary systems in the hospital setting is not well understood.

The authors completed a narrative synthesis of literature findings on the effectiveness of eMAR-based systems in the hospital setting.

A literature review was carried out across 5 bibliographic databases to evaluate the safety features of current eMAR-based systems in preventing dosing errors and design issues that impede their usability.

While eMAR-based systems are beneficial to reducing order and drug cross-checking errors, safe dose verification features are sporadically available for targeted tasks. Overall, the eMAR had little impact on preventing low to moderate dosing errors. Dosing errors may occur because of error-prone activities that result from system design and work process issues during medication administration.