Medication errors prevention in hospitals: Barcode point of care system

Abstract

Patient safety is a priority in health systems and various efforts have been developed in recent years for its promotion. The World Health Organization considers that one of the greatest challenges concerning the quality of care and patient safety is the occurrence of adverse events, where they encompass the events related to medication errors that continue to occur in large number. However, some of those errors can be prevented with the use of new technologies such as Barcode Point of Care System (BPC). With the overall objective of identifying in the scientific literature the impact, for patient, of the adoption of the BPC in the prevention of medication errors, an integrative literature review was carried out based on the following question: What is the impact of the implementation and use of the Barcode Point Of Care system in the prevention of medication errors in a hospital setting? The research was performed in Bireme, MEDLINE, CINAHL and PubMed databases. The final analysis of the selected literature, 16 articles, concluded that the barcode point of care system is an effective tool in the prevention of medication errors in a hospital setting, as well as in ensuring patient safety.