What am I giving tonight? Information needs of nurses related to patient medications administration while using a clinical information system.

Abstract

This study examined the information needs of nurses using a Clinical Information System (CIS) to review medications that they have to administer for their shift. In a laboratory setting, nurses were asked to follow a speak-aloud protocol while reviewing a scripted medication list. We coded the nurses' information seeking behavior utilizing a previously described framework. Our findings suggest that 1) nurses predominately look through physician notes to gather clues in answering medication-related information needs and 2) nurses often leave the CIS to search other computerized sources for information about unfamiliar medications.