Canadian Study links Medication Error in Hospitals with Overtime
A Canadian study, "Correlates of Medication Error in Hospitals", published May 14, 2008 in Health Reports concluded that nurses that usually work overtime and nurses that perceive staffing and resources were inadequate were more likely to report that a patient had received the wrong drug or wrong dosage. The nurses that participated in the study also reported that hospital medication mistakes were more likely to occur when poor working relations with physicians, lack of support from co-workers, and low job security existed. The study analyzed interviews of 18,676 nurses in Canadian hospitals performed by the Canadian 2005 National Survey of the Work and Health of Nurses.
Other interesting findings include the fact that 19% of the nurses interviewed acknowledged that medication errors had occured "occasionally" or "frequently" to patients in their care the year before the survey. The complete study can be found at the following link:
http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/82-003-XIE/2008002/article/10565/findings-en.htm
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