Antecedents of severe and nonsevere medication errors.
OBJECTIVE
To investigate if differences in antecedents of severe and nonsevere medication errors exist.


METHODS
A longitudinal study of 6 months of data from 279 nursing units in 146 randomly selected hospitals in the United States (US).


METHODS
Antecedents of severe and nonsevere medication errors included work environment factors (work dynamics and RN hours), team factors (communication with physicians and nurses' expertise), person factors (nurses' education and experience), patient factors (age, health status, and previous hospitalization), and medication-related support services. Generalized estimating equations with a negative binomial distribution were used with nursing units as the unit of analysis.


RESULTS
None of the antecedents allowed predicting both types of medication errors. Nurses' expertise had a negative and medication-related support services had a positive association with nonsevere medication errors. Nurses' educational level had a significant nonlinear relationship with severe medication errors only: As the percentage of unit BSN-prepared nurses increased, severe medication errors decreased until the percentage of BSN-prepared nurses reached 54%. In contrast, RN experience had a statistically significant relationship with nonsevere medication errors only and nursing units with more experienced nurses reported more nonsevere medication errors.


CONCLUSIONS
Severe and nonsevere medication errors might have different antecedents.


CONCLUSIONS
Error prevention and management strategies should be targeted to specific types of medication errors for best results.
Chang
Yun-Kyung
YK
School of Nursing, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA. ykchang@email.unc.edu
Mark
Barbara A
BA