Nurse staffing is an important strategy to prevent medication error in community hospitals

The prevalence of medication administration errors continues to be a problem requiring the attention of nurse leaders. In this study the relationship between nurse staffing and the occurrence of medication errors was examined. Using a retrospective design, researchers analyzed secondary data from administrative databases of one hospital containing 801 weekly staffing intervals and 31,080 patient observations. The current study shows that increasing the number of RN hours and decreasing or eliminating LPN hours can be a strategy to reduce medication errors.