A randomized clinical trial conducted on a study group of over 3,300 Clinicians, who in total recorded almost 4.5 million order sessions, discovered a causative behavior between the number of patient records open at a time and the number of wrong-patient order errors incurred. Clinicians were placed in one of two groups. The first could only have one record open at a time, and the second could have up to four open. Although the study struggled to discover a link at first, under further examination of the data the researchers found that most of those in the “multiple records open” group were in fact still only opening one record at a time. Once that was accounted for and figures were compared correctly, the link between multiple open records and increased risk of wrong-patient orders became clear. In previous studies, similar research found that safety and efficiency/speed are a trade-off, and that configuration of the two requires understanding of contextual details like clinician satisfaction and throughput.

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