Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to reveal factors that may occur or that may prevent medication errors, and to consider some measures of patients' safety. For this aim, we explored the characteristics of each ward and the characteristics of each nurse as well as their experiences about medication errors.
The investigation was conducted at a approximately 650-bed university hospital located in a large urban center in Tokyo, and at a approximately 150-bed private hospital located in a suburb of Tokyo. Questionnaires were distributed in October 1991 and asked nurses to identify medication errors in which they had been personally committed within the past one-month. A response rate was approximately 70%. We were informed other information of each unit from head nurse-such as the unit size, case mix, nurse staffing and working schedule of nurses.
Results indicate that on the questionnaires the nurses reported 10 times medication errors than they reported to head nurses. 56 percent of 155 nurses (except nurses who were working at an ICU and a mental ward) stated they had made medication errors or near misses during the 1-month reporting period. 30 percent of 155 stated they actually dealt with medication errors occurred by others.
Several factors that effect medication errors have been identified by a stepwise discriminant analysis. The proportion of serious patient and the bed occupancy rate influenced the occurrence of medication errors. The educational career of a nurse, especially whether the nurse had been offered an assistant nursing program or not, related to dealing with and/or preventing medication errors. Although the number of medication errors per nurse of the ICU in the university hospital was almost the same as that of the unit including ICU beds in the private hospital, but approximately 10 times more medication errors and near misses per patient were reported in the former than in the later.
Several limitations of this study dictate that the results be applied with caution. However, it may be helpful in preventing medication errors to lighten the burden of nurses, and to enlighten nurses on this subject.
