Developing and assessing the usability of a prescribing quality and safety dashboard in Irish general practice: protocol for a qualitative study.

Background: The third WHO Global patient safety challenge, "Medication Without Harm" aims to reduce severe avoidable medication related ham by 50% globally. One approach to reducing medication related harm is to develop interventions that improve prescribing. Audit and feedback is one such intervention that has been shown to have an effect on professional behaviour. With advancements in the data infrastructure of primary care it is now possible to harness routine prescribing data for ongoing and up-to-date comparative benchmarking. The aim of this study was to assess the usability and usefulness of a prescribing safety dashboard developed in Irish general practice.

Methods: Practices utilising the data analytics platform, MedVault opted in to share anonymous prescription data to enable the development of the prescribing safety dashboard. Participants from these practices who had previously expressed an interest in taking part in this qualitative study will be formally invited to take part. Recruited prescribers will take part in an online interview with a think aloud process where they will share their screen as they navigate the dashboard and verbalise their thoughts. This will be followed by a semi-structured interview where their views on prescribing safety and receiving feedback on prescribing will be explored. For the think aloud process, screen recordings will be reviewed alongside the transcripts, and analysed using Nielsen's five quality components of usability: learnability, efficiency, memorability, error recovery and satisfaction as a framework. An inductive thematic approach will be used to analyse GPs' perspectives on prescribing safety and feedback.

Discussion: This study will explore the usability and acceptability of a prescribing quality and safety dashboard. To design future interventions, policies, and quality improvement initiatives that make use of routine data, it is essential to understand how GPs engage with and use these tools. This understanding can help ensure such initiatives are developed in ways that maximise relevance, usability, and engagement.