Drug Dosing Issues and Resources

One of the key reasons that clinicians are frustrated with decision support related to drug interaction software is the potential for alert fatigue. Clinicans do not want to be messaged regarding dosage precautions related to an interaction which has already been recognized and addressed. It is particularly important in the era of electronic prescribing to engineer systems which can present the appropriate information to the appropriate person. Systems need to recognize whether an individual has previously addressed the issue, rather than simply blindly alerting to the presence of two medications within the medicine list. A collaborative effort between drug database providers and application vendors is needed, and discussions to improve the quality of alerts, while decreasing the quantity, are moving forward. These will greatly improve satisfaction with these tools.