How does electronic prescribing reduce medication errors, and what are typical limitations?

• A. Standardizes orders, provides decision support; limitations include alert fatigue, overreliance, and data-entry errors
• B. It eliminates all medication errors
• C. It only improves handwriting readability
• D. It has no limitations

Answer: (C)

Electronic prescribing improves safety by standardizing how orders are written and adding decision support that checks for issues before the patient receives the medication. This means orders follow consistent formats, include complete patient details, and trigger automatic checks such as potential drug–drug interactions, inappropriate doses for certain populations, allergy flags, duplicate therapies, and formulary or route considerations. By reducing illegible handwriting, missing information, and unclear instructions, it helps ensure that the right drug, dose, and route are chosen and clearly communicated to the pharmacy.

But these systems aren’t perfect. A common limitation is alert fatigue: when too many warnings fire, clinicians may mute or overlook important alerts, which can undermine safety. There can also be overreliance on the technology, known as automation bias, where the clinician trusts the system more than their own clinical judgment. Data-entry errors can still occur if the wrong drug, dose, or patient is selected from lists, dropdowns, or auto-filled fields. Other challenges include system downtime, interoperability gaps between different EHRs and pharmacy networks, and mismatches between formulary restrictions and what can be dispensed or actually needed for a patient.