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Applying Ergonomics Concepts to Improve Satisfaction with Controlled
Medications Management

C. Lu, L. Shen, and T. Huang 1
1
1
Nursing Department, Taipei Municipal Wanfang Hospital (Managed by Taipei Medical University),
1
Chinese Taipei

Background: Musculoskeletal discomfort is a common occupational injury among nursing staff,
among which “bad posture” is the most common, but improvement is low-cost and highly effective.
This unit mainly treats cancer and terminal patients. Controlled medications are commonly used to
control and relieve the pain symptoms of patients. Taking oral and patch analgesics as an example,
the medications are taken about 50 times a day. When taking controlled medications, two staff must
open the lock separately at the same time. Due to space planning restrictions, all controlled
medications will be placed in the same drawer. Therefore, when taking medications, staff must bend
down to find the patient’s medicine and write down the record. Each time taking medicine requires
completed in 202 seconds.

Objective: In order to improve the convenience and safety of nurses when taking controlled
medications, and achieve medication safety and management satisfaction.

Methods: Based on the principle of reasonable combination of the interaction between people,
machines and the environment to achieve the purpose of improving efficiency, safety, health and
comfort in production, 1. Controlled medications storage cabinet planning is formulated, and each
patient is separated and erected in a hierarchical manner. Staff can extract medications without
bending down. 2. The person responsible for setting the key for controlled medications does not need
to blindly search for key holders, reducing time spent.

Results: 1. The average time to obtain a patient’s medication dropped from 202 seconds to 90 seconds.
2. Nurses’ satisfaction with the management of oral controlled drugs increased from 72% to 90%.

Conclusion: Nurses must maintain a good attitude and stability during their busy work routine, and
managers must provide internal customers with a safe and friendly environment. Although limited
by the hardware environment, large-scale changes cannot be made, but through fine-tuning and
adding human factors engineering, staff can achieve a smooth and safe process.

Keywords: ergonomics, satisfaction, controlled medication

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Poster Presentation Abstracts
Correspondence: Chi-Yu Lu, Nursing Department, Taipei Municipal Wanfang Hospital (Managed by
Taipei Medical University), Chinese Taipei
E-mail: 86408@w.tmu.edu.tw

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