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Study: Medication safety changes coming slowly

Quality Improvement Monitor, June 9, 2005

Medication safety has improved during the past five years, but improvements are coming slowly, according to a McKesson and Harris Interactive survey conducted in April.

Seventy-two percent of nurses believe medication safety has improved at their hospitals during the past five years, but 94% reported seeing one or more serious medication errors during that same time frame, the study found. Researchers surveyed 215 registered nurses selected randomly from U.S. hospitals with at least 125 beds.

Less than half of nurses surveyed-43%-use online documentation tools at a nursing station, and only 32% use those tools at the bedside, the survey found. Only 23% of nurses surveyed use bar-code administration tools, but 70% use automated medication dispensing cabinets at their facilities.

"Despite the availability of advanced technologies for making care both safer and more efficient, nurses are largely still practicing in a manual, paper-based world that by nature is very complex," said Billie Waldo, MS, RN, BC, McKesson's vice president and general manager of medication safety. "Combined with nursing shortages in many parts of the country, it's not difficult to understand why errors occur."

McKesson is one of the nation's largest pharmaceutical wholesalers and pharmacy management companies. Visit http://mpt.mckesson.com to see more results from the survey.

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