Insulin is a high-risk medicine that has been implicated in serious adverse events for hospital inpatients, including medication-error related deaths. Most insulin errors occur during administration, and “wrong dose” is the most common type. A paper-based subcutaneous insulin chart (the “NSIC”) was developed for the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, using a range of human factors methods, with the aim of reducing the opportunity for errors. The present lab-based study empirically assessed whether the NSIC's human factors design translates into improved user-performance in the determination of insulin doses, compared with a pre-existing chart. Forty-one experienced nurses and 48 novice chart-users completed 60 experimental trials (30 per chart), in which they determined doses to administer to patients. Both groups determined insulin doses faster, and made fewer dose errors, when using the NSIC. These results support the utility of the usability heuristics employed in developing the chart.

胰岛素是一种高风险药物，与住院患者的严重不良事件有关，包括与用药错误相关的死亡。大多数胰岛素错误发生在给药过程中，“错误剂量”是最常见的类型。为澳大利亚卫生保健安全和质量委员会开发了纸质皮下胰岛素图表（“NSIC”），使用一系列人为因素方法，目的是减少出错的机会。与预先存在的图表相比，目前基于实验室的研究凭经验评估了 NSIC 的人为因素设计是否可以转化为提高用户在确定胰岛素剂量方面的表现。41 名经验丰富的护士和 48 名新手图表用户完成了 60 项实验性试验（每个图表 30 次），他们在其中确定了对患者的给药剂量。当使用 NSIC 时，两组都更快地确定了胰岛素剂量，并减少了剂量错误。这些结果支持在开发图表时使用的可用性启发法的效用。