Relationship of nursing practice abilities with occurrence of medication errors

<p>In order to identify whether a relationship exists between nursing practice abilities and the occurrence of Medication errors (oral and injection), we developed the hypothesis that the occurrence of Medication errors is lower in wards where there is a high proportion of nurses whose nursing practice abilities are high and also that the opposite holds true. This study was repetitive survey design. Data were collected at three time points, in January 2007 and May and July in 2008；months known to include high and low occurrences of adverse events. Data were collected daily for one week in each month. Six acute hospitals were selected from the list of the hospitals by the chance method, and 46 general wards participated in the research. A questionnaire survey was conducted with staff nurses in each ward excluding the nurse manager in order to the estimate nursing practice abilities. Data regarding the Medication errors (oral and injection) were collected as the dependent variables, and extent of nursing care need, and number of medications were collected as risk adjustment data. For the analysis, we defined a “high proportion of upper-middle level nurses” to mean there was a high level nursing practice abilities on a ward and this was used as the independent variable. We analyzed data for Medication errors in a week-unit for each month by using the generalized estimating equation with Poisson deviation in order to determine the relationship between Medication errors (oral and injection) and independent variables. No relationship was found between the proportion of upper-middle level nurses and “Medication errors (oral)”. However, a relationship is seen during the daytime：when there is a higher proportion of upper-middle level nurse on the wards, the number of “Medication errors (injection)” is lower.</p>