A cross-site qualitative study of physician order entry.

Objective: To describe the perceptions of diverse professionals involved in computerized physician order entry (POE) at sites where POE has been successfully implemented and to identify differences between teaching and nonteaching hospitals.

Design: A multidisciplinary team used observation, focus groups, and interviews with clinical, administrative, and information technology staff to gather data at three sites. Field notes and transcripts were coded using an inductive approach to identify patterns and themes in the data.