Nursing Home Error and Level of Staff Credentials

Providing safe nursing home care is both a clinical and fiscal challenge in many countries. The fiscal realities result in the addition of other workers, such as medication technicians or aides (CMT/A), to the health care team. The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of various levels...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Clinical nursing research 2007-02, Vol.16 (1), p.72-78
Main Authors: Scott-Cawiezell, Jill, Pepper, Ginette A., Madsen, Richard W., Petroski, Greg, Vogelsmeier, Amy, Zellmer, Dave
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Clinical nursing
Credentialing
Credentials
Critical incidents
Drugs
Errors
Health care
Health care industry
Health Personnel
Home health care
Human error
Humans
Interruptions
Medical errors
Medical technicians
Medication Errors
Midwestern United States
Nursing
Nursing homes
Nursing Homes - manpower
Order entry
Practice nurses
Staff
Teams
Technicians
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Summary:Providing safe nursing home care is both a clinical and fiscal challenge in many countries. The fiscal realities result in the addition of other workers, such as medication technicians or aides (CMT/A), to the health care team. The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of various levels of credentialing among nursing home staff who deliver medications (RN, LPN, or CMT/A) on medication error. In addition, the impact of distractions and interruptions was explored. Using naïve observation, 39 medication administrators representing various levels of credentialing were unobtrusively observed to determine the number of medication errors, distractions, and interruptions in five nursing homes. There were no differences in medication error rates by level of credential. However, RNs had more interruptions during their medication administration, and these increased interruptions were associated with increased medication error rates when wrong time errors were excluded (p = .0348).
ISSN:1054-7738
1552-3799
DOI:10.1177/1054773806295241