DOES FINGER POINTING TOWARD DRUG NAMES PREVENT CONFUSION BETWEEN SIMILAR NAMES DURING RAPID SEARCH?

Abstract

It is customary for Japanese healthcare workers to use finger pointing toward drugs and prescriptions when they prepare and administer medication to patients, which is believed to be effective to avoid medication errors. The present study investigated whether finger pointing would be effective to avoid confusion errors and anchoring of the gaze on the word pointed to would be a plausible explanation for the potential effects. Sixteen participants observed four drug names with or without pointing with the index finger and determined whether the target drug name was present or not as quickly and accurately as possible (i.e., a choice reaction-time task). The number of similar drug names with the target word was manipulated. The results showed that finger pointing was effective to reduce the error rate when only single similar word existed. Analyses of gaze behavior showed that the fixation duration and number of fixations per drug name increased under finger pointing condition. These results suggest that finger pointing is likely to be effective to fixate a target drug name for a longer time; the effects on error prevention seem to be evident when the error rate itself is relatively high.