Can Electronic Order Sets Reduce Delays in Prescribing Medications on Admission To PICU?

University Hospitals Bristol has been using the Philips ICCA electronic prescribing system across all adult, paediatric and neonatal critical care services since 2016. The “order set” function had not been used on PICU prior to this project. The PICU quality improvement group decided to explore the benefits of the order set function with the aim of improving prescribing efficiency and uniformity across the unit. The time taken to prescribe all 12 medications was reduced on average by 9.4 hours per patient when the order set was used. This project is an example of how prescribing support functions within electronic prescribing packages can reduce time taken to write up medications within our unit.