Guided Notes

EHR Patient Safety & Usability

How EHRs can cause or prevent harm — common EHR-related errors, ONC SAFER Guides, usability principles, safety reporting, alert performance and safe design reviews.

EHRs can help and harm

Slide 1 / 5

EHRs prevent many errors (illegible handwriting, missed allergies, duplicate orders) but introduce new ones: • Wrong-patient orders when multiple charts are open. • Selecting the wrong item from long drop-down lists. • Default doses or times that don't fit the patient. • Copy-paste propagating outdated information. • Results that don't reach the right clinician. • Alert fatigue causing important warnings to be ignored. • Display problems: truncated text, confusing units.

← EHR Security & Privacy Monitoring