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Large Volumetric Infusion Pumps: Inventory Management and Usability Surveys [Internet]. Ottawa (ON): Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health; 2012 Mar.
To meet the study objectives, two surveys were developed. One survey focused on the procurement of large volumetric infusion pumps, and the second survey inquired about the usability of large volumetric infusion pumps in Canadian hospitals.
A questionnaire on the current inventory of large volumetric infusion pumps in Canadian hospitals was developed and administered by CADTH. The survey questions focused mainly on the identification of brands and models of infusion pumps used in health care facilities, as well as the existence of reporting mechanisms for errors related to the usage of infusion pumps.
The target population was all individuals responsible for the inventory management of medical supplies and equipment for an RHA, provincial purchasing group, or an individual hospital in Canada.
We invited 117 organizations, including hospitals, RHAs, and provincial purchasing groups, to complete the survey. The Liaison Officers at CADTH identified the appropriate contacts for the inventory management survey in their jurisdictions. The Liaison Program allows Liaison Officers to work closely with decision-makers in their respective jurisdictions and to support their access to and use of CADTH’s services. They are located in all provincial and territorial jurisdictions, except in Ontario and Quebec.
According to the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, 155 hospital corporations and 56 additional facilities form part of the hospital corporations in the province.15 Through its existing contacts, CADTH emailed 104 hospitals to participate in the survey. In Quebec, members of l’Association des physiciens et ingénieurs biomédicaux du Québec (APIBQ) were also invited to fill out the questionnaire. As APIBQ sent an invitation to its members on behalf of CADTH, we were unable to determine how many individuals in Quebec received a copy of the survey.
The survey was pilot-tested in early fall 2011 with two respondents in Canada, who represented members of the target population. One participant was a purchasing manager in an RHA, and the second participant was a technology acquisition specialist in the biomedical engineering department of a hospital. Both individuals also responded to the final survey. Two additional individuals involved in procurement decisions for their organizations were invited to participate in the pilot, but either did not reply or declined to participate. Revisions to the survey were made based on participants’ feedback. In the fall of 2011, a revised version of the survey was available on the CADTH website in both English and French. An identified contact person (for example, procurement or materials manager) received an invitation via email to complete the survey through the CADTH website (Appendix 1). Although respondents had the option to complete the survey in English and in French, most individuals received an invitation in English. Bilingual email invitations were sent to individuals who provide health care services to patients in both official languages. A reminder and thank you message was emailed to all contacts in our sample, as per Dillman’s survey methodology16 and by additional evidence17 (Appendix 2). The survey responses were collected during a four-week period. No incentives were used to encourage participation in the inventory management survey.
A questionnaire on the current usability of large volumetric infusion pumps in hospitals across Canada was developed by CADTH and administered by Ipsos, a survey-based marketing research firm.18 The survey questions addressed brands and pump models used, problems and errors experienced, satisfaction with the performance of the infusion pumps, and the existence of a formal reporting mechanism for adverse events.
The target population included nurses who work in Canadian hospitals, regardless of type (for example, academic versus community); number of beds; and geographic location.
Non-probability sampling methods were necessary given the rarity of nurses in the general population. According to Health Canada, 251,675 registered nurses (RNs) were employed in nursing in 2005, 63% of whom were employed in the hospital setting.19 Non-probability samples, particularly Internet panels, are increasingly being used in academic survey research, in part in response to a decline in participation and an increase in costs associated with probability sampling methods, such as random digit dialling.20,21
Ipsos used a pre-identified sample of nurses to form the basis for the sample. The sample consisted of nurses who had identified their profession as part of an online panel screening questionnaire recruited from a broad range of locations online or who had been identified as part of a probability sample and had agreed to take part in future research.22 A total of 29,920 invitations were sent asking to interview nurses. The topic of the survey was not disclosed, and a token incentive was offered to encourage participation.
To ensure that the survey sample reflected the study population, Ipsos established quotas according to the demographic characteristics of nurses by region and gender as per the 2006 Canadian Census.
The survey was pilot-tested by CADTH in early fall 2011 with three participants across Canada who represented a subset of the target population. We were unable to determine if they also responded to the final survey. Revisions to the survey were made based on the feedback from the pilot test.
A revised version of the survey was made available on the Ispos website using Confirmit, a survey platform. The survey was available in both English and French. All nurses in the survey sample received an invitation to complete the survey through the Ipsos website (Appendix 3). As a predefined survey sample was used, a thank you or reminder email was not sent. The survey responses were collected in fall 2011 over a four-week period (October 18 to November 15).
For both surveys, subgroup analyses by jurisdiction, hospital, or organization type and size were performed.
In the inventory management survey, the unit of analysis was hospitals. If the organization type was an RHA or provincial purchasing group, responses were weighted according to the number of hospitals represented by the organization. SPSS version 15.0 for Windows was used for all statistical analyses of the survey data. All the results presented were descriptive in nature. Confidence intervals (CIs) were not provided as they were considered too wide to be informative due to the survey sample size (n = 117).
In the statistical analysis of the usability survey, statistically significant differences were tested for and are presented in the Results section. The phrase “were more likely” is used to indicate that a statistically significant difference between two or more results was identified using the 95% CI.
Except where otherwise noted, this work is distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND), a copy of which is available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
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