Abstract
BACKGROUND: Medication errors, now thought to be 4 times greater than previous estimates, harm patients, families, health care institutions, and nurses themselves, who are second victims of their mistakes.
PROBLEM: Current nursing education may lack coherent medication safety frameworks other than the classic Five Rights construct.
APPROACH: This project piloted an educational intervention with senior associate degree nursing students based on high-reliability organization (HRO) safety principles.
OUTCOMES: Subjects evaluated the HRO safety concepts learning experience positively and improved pretest to posttest scores by 74%.
CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates subjects' ready acceptance and comprehension of HRO safety theory as applied to medication safety, an alternative to the Five Rights construct.