In today’s society, the demands on the healthcare system are constantly increasing. As the population ages, there is a higher demand of healthcare professionals, such as nurses. However, because of this increased demand, there can often be a shortage of nurses. As such this can lead to the occurrence of short staffing and high nurse to patient ratios. However, one way in which these problems can somewhat be alleviated is through the use of new technological developments. These developments can help decrease the workload of nurses and allow them to successfully deal with increased patient workloads. One of these technological advances which is designed to help reduce nurse workload and improve patient safety is that of the Bar-coded Medicine Administration System (BCMA) (Holden, Rivera-Rodriguez, Faye, Scanlon, & Karsh, 2013).

One of the many duties of nurses is to administer medication to patients. This can often be a long task, due to the variety of paperwork and searching for medications. As well, previous research has shown that when nurses are overworked, often due to a shortage of nurses and a high patient load, this can lead to an increase in mistakes. As such this leads to a decrease in patient safety and leads some patients to receive the wrong type of medication. One type of technology which can help to reduce these errors, and also reduce the workload of nurses is that of the BCMA (Hayden, Lanoue, & Still, 2011).

BCMA is a barcode based automation system. The way in which the system works is that patients are given a barcode on a wristband. This is then scanned and based on the information in the system the nurses find the correct medication on the cart, which is also bar-coded, scan the medication and administer the medication to the patient. Because everything is scanned and automated there is less of a risk of administering the wrong medication. In theory this can decrease the nurse’s workload if the medications are organized on the cart and they spend less time looking for medications for the patients. As well, from the standpoint of patient safety, when nurses are overworked they tend to make more mistakes which can lead to the occurrence of adverse side effects if patients are given either the wrong medication or the wrong dose of the proper medication.

However, in practice there is still much work to be done to refine BCMA systems. As an example a study published in 2008, found that in certain situations nurses were using workarounds to speed up the process of administering medication. These workarounds included printing additional patient armbands, not scanning medications, and not scanning the patient armband. With respect to printing additional patient armbands, nurses were found to print these as a way to act as a proxy barcode and allow for batch scanning of medications for multiple patients. However, this workaround can increase the risk to patient safety. A second problem is that of either not scanning the medication or not scanning the patient armband. In both of these situations, there is increased risk to patient safety. Often times these workarounds are done because the nurse does not want to bring the heavy medication cart into the patient’s room (Koppel, Wetterneck, Telles, & Karsh, 2008). However, since the publication of this study, there are been drastic improvement in the technology for BCMA.

Some of the improvements which have been made to BCMA include preventing the creation of additional armbands, requiring all medication to be scanned, and improving the barcode technology. In a systemic review of the literature it was found that there was a positive impact on patient safety and nurse workload when the BCMA was used in conjunction with the computerized order entry (CPOE) and automated dispensing devices (ADDs). CPOEs can be used by physicians or pharmacists to input the prescription orders. As well ADDs can be used to automatically dispense the medication, reducing the need for searching of medication. The combination of all three of these types of systems has been shown to significantly increase patient safety and also lead to a reduction in the workload of nurses (Shah, Lo, Babich, Tsao, & Bansback, 2016).

As the technology is still not very widespread, the number of studies fully evaluating its capabilities is low. As such more research is necessary in order to fully understand the benefits that these types of systems can provide. As well, because the implementation of CPOE, ADD and BCMA systems require alteration to the workflow of nurses and pharmacists, the initial implementation can be difficult. However, as nurses and other healthcare professionals become used to these systems, the full benefits, in terms of increased patient safety and reduced workload, can be fully realized. While staff may be reluctant to alter their workflows in the beginning, once staff see the positive benefits they are likely to accept the implementation of the new systems (Shah et al., 2016).

Overall, it is important to understand that in today’s day and age, new technology can be beneficial to helping to relieve the stress put on nurses due to increased patient workloads and staffing shortages. But, as with implementing any type of technology, time is required to allow staff to adapt to the new procedures. While implementation of BCMA still has some challenges associated with it, hopefully with time and further research these challenges can be minimized. As such, BCMA is a viable option to help reduce nurse workload and improve patient safety.