An observational study in Nurse's Role, sponsored by The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. Recruiting at 1 site in United States. Open to participants aged 20 Years and older. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2026-06-15.
Sponsored by The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio · Observational
This study looks at the effects of using "smart pumps" that connect with the Electronic Health Record (EHR) in 8 adult ICU units.
We will interview nurses and healthcare team members to learn about any challenges with this technology.
All nurses in these units will be invited to complete a survey on how easy the technology is to use.
Some nurses will practice giving medications to "mannequins" in a simulation lab to see how they work with the pumps.
We will also look at existing data to find out how many nurses use the technology and what types of alerts or errors come up.
Finally, we will review patient charts to see if using the technology has increased or decreased errors in recording IV medication amounts.
This mixed-methods design study focuses on understanding the complexity and consequences of implementing the integrated smart pumps-EHR technology in 8 adult acute and intensive care units (ICUs) using a comprehensive evaluation approach. The evaluation will include (1) analyzing use manifestations in terms of nurse adoption, alarms, alerts, and error messages associated with technology use, (2) examining the usability of the integrated technology, and (3) identifying influential factors that facilitate or hinder technology adoption.
The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio is the lead sponsor of 435 studies on the registry; 88 are open to participants now.
Of its 62 completed or terminated interventional studies of FDA-regulated products, 31 (50%) have results posted.
Counted across the registry records on this site, refreshed daily.
Nurses who use integrated smart pump technology to administer IV drugs and fluids will take part in interviews, simulations, and surveys.
Additionally, a sample of multidisciplinary team members involved in the implementation of smart pumps in 2018, the integration of smart pumps with the electronic health record in 2020, or past/current pump-related quality improvement initiatives will participate in interviews.
Exclusion Criteria:
(A) Nurses from 8 acute and intensive care units (659 nurses total) will be invited to complete a survey about using the pumps. (B) Of these 659 nurses, 48 will join focus groups to share detailed thoughts on pump use. (C) Another 48 nurses will practice using the pumps in a simulation setting. The study will also review 200 patient records to check for any differences in documentation errors of IV medication volumes when using pump-EHR integration versus manually programming the pumps. Additionally, the study will analyze pump data from the last 6 months to see how often the technology is used and what types of alerts and programming errors occur. Furthermore, 20 healthcare team members will participate in interviews to understand the barriers and facilitators of technology use.
Pump adoption rate
Data from the pumps over the past 6 months will be reviewed and analyzed to understand how often nurses use the integrated pump-EHR (or electronic health record) technology versus manually programming the pumps when administering medications. Z-test will be used to test the difference in percentage in adoption rate.
Time frame: 6 months
Alerts messages
Data from the pumps over the past 6 months will be reviewed to examine the difference in frequency of alert messages (including programming error messages) generated when manually programming the pump versus using the pump-EHR integrated technology. Data will be analyzed using chi-square.
Time frame: 6 months
Errors in documenting the volume of IV medications
200 patient charts will be reviewed to compare documentation errors in IV medication volumes when using pump-EHR integration versus manual pump programming.
Time frame: 4 months
Usability of the Pumps
During observations of 48 nurses' interactions with the pumps in a simulated environment, we will identify the navigation paths nurses follow to program the pumps (through recording of nurse-pump navigation), examine usability errors (through recording of nurse-pump navigation), record the time taken by nurses to navigate the pumps to administer IV medications (through recording of nurse-pump navigation), assess perceived workload during pump navigation (using a survey), and assess nurse experience and perceived challenges during task completion (using the debriefing session).
Time frame: 9 months
Nurse perception of the usability of the integrated smart pump technology
We will send a survey to all nurses who work in the 8 acute and intensive care units to understand their perceptions about the technology. Descriptive statistics will be used to analyze the results.
Time frame: 6 months
Factors that facilitate or hinder technology adoption
We will use semi-structured interviews to explore bedside nurses' experiences with the integrated smart pump-EHR technology, including any challenges they face. Additionally, we will interview a multidisciplinary healthcare team to understand the organizational and contextual factors that help or hinder the adoption of this technology. All interviews will be transcribed by professionals from Rev, a transcription vendor. Data will be entered into nVivo software. The 4-stage content analysis methodology by Bengtsson (2016) will be used to categorize narrative data into themes.
Time frame: 11 months
Plan to share: Yes — The specific individual participant data (IPD) that will be shared will be limited to quantitative data. These will include the de-identified responses to the survey, the log data retrieved from smart pumps, and the de-identified results of the chart audit.
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The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio