Do healthcare professionals work around safety standards, and should we be worried? A scoping review.
Workarounds have the potential to degrade patient safety. This systematic review sought to identify circumstances in which workarounds are applied. More than half of the identified studies focused on medication safety, such as workarounds related to barcode scanning. Organizational factors, including workload and time pressure, were identified in 93% of studies. Several studies reported that workarounds did not result in error or harm or could simultaneously have positive and negative implications.