Can you confirm that?

Confirmation bias is the human tendency to select what is familiar or expected, rather than what is actually there. In other words, people see what they are looking for. If a nurse is waiting for a new bag of dopamine to arrive from the pharmacy and sees a pharmacy tech coming to the unit with an IV bag, he may not notice the IV contains dobutamine. Confirmation bias is also seen when pharmacists and nurses transcribe and confirm a new medication order; this is a leading cause of drug errors here at MUSC.   One strategy to defeat confirmation bias is the independent double check. For an independent double check, the second practitioner is told nothing of the drug she is checking, thus avoiding the bias. If this process is not standardized and independent, however, it may not work. A casual "check my dopamine", does little to promote safety.   A Canadian study found using a checklist during an independent double check was helpful, however, this may be too time consuming for all medication administration.