Nurses' attitude for using barcode medication administration system in a developing Country

Medication errors are common in healthcare settings. To prevent these errors, use of modern technology is suggested. Improvement of medication administration system particularly at the time of drug administration is mandated in Iran. Barcode medication administration (BCMA) systems are useful in this regard. This study was conducted to assess nurses' attitude for the use of BCMA systems. To this end, 283 randomly selected nurses working in teaching hospitals were surveyed using a five point Likert scale questionnaire. The most positive attitudes were related to the role of BCMA in reducing medication errors (4.02± 0.8), improving performance (3.8± 0.99), productivity (3.8± 0.97) and making patient care easier (3.83± 0.9). Only 9.9 percent of nurses did not like to use the technology. There was no significant difference between nurses in terms of their age, experience, education, and hospitals. In conclusion, nurses' attitude about BCMA was in a relatively good level. However, there is a need to train nurses for the use of this technology. © 2018 The authors and IOS Press