Smart Infusion Pumps Reduce Intravenous Medication Administration Errors at an Australian Teaching Hospital

Serious and life‐threatening adverse drug events are often attributed to intravenous medication administration errors. Although smart infusion pumps are increasingly being adopted by hospitals to prevent such errors, data are lacking on their effectiveness in clinical practice. To measure and characterise intravenous medication administration errors and their clinical significance before and after the implementation of smart infusion pumps. In the pre‐intervention period, an independent observer over 41 working days recorded the prescribing and administration details of infusions administered via the IMED Gemini Volumetric Infusion Pumps. 20 months after the introduction of the smart pumps – Alaris GP Volumetric Pump with Guardrails software – a repeat audit was conducted over 27 working days. Only infusions containing drugs that were to be incorporated into Guardrails (the medication–error–prevention software of the Alaris GP pump) were evaluated. The clinical significance of the identified errors was evaluated by 2 independent assessors (pharmacist and doctor) and rated as ‘low’, ‘moderate’, ‘high’ or ‘extreme’. In the pre‐intervention period, 76 infusions (n = 432, 18%) had one or more errors compared to 25 infusions (n = 266, 9.4%) following the introduction of the smart pumps. Of the 165 infusions administered using Guardrails, only 6 infusions with errors (3.6%) were identified. When drugs were infused with the Alaris GP pumps without Guardrails, the number of errors post‐intervention when compared with errors in the pre‐intervention period were not statistically significant (p = 0.8). When Alaris GP pumps with Guardrails were used there were no errors of ‘extreme’ clinical significance and only 1 error of ‘high’ clinical significance compared to the pre‐intervention period where 1 ‘extreme’ and 30 errors with ‘high’ clinical significance were identified. Alaris GP pumps with Guardrails resulted in significant reductions in the number and clinical significance of intravenous medication administration errors.