Is medication administration in the elderly influenced by nurses' demographics in South Africa?

Background

Globally, nurses are increasingly employed post-retirement, with task-shifting to nurses with lower competencies, a lack of knowledge being a barrier, all of which could lead to medication errors.

Aim

To describe the impact of nurses' age, experience, training, and skill mix on the medication administration processes in long-term care facilities (LTCFs).

Setting

Nurses (

Methods

A quantitative non-experimental, cross-sectional descriptive design was used. The LTCFs were divided into funded (state-subsidised) and private (for profit) facilities using a stratified sampling method and each stratum thereafter randomised to obtain equal samples from each stratum. Self-administered questionnaires with close-ended statements were used, and statistical software (SPSS version 27) to perform descriptive and inferential analyses.

Results

Respondents, (27%), had more than nine years of experience, with 15.8% aged 61-70 years; and 3.5% aged 71-80 years. Some were 'very inexperienced' in computer use (29.3%), 35% received medication training longer than five years ago, and

Conclusion

The aging nursing workforce, although experienced, found the job demands, paperwork, and technology barriers. Outdated training and delegating medication administration to lower categories of nurses can lead to medication errors.

Contribution

This study's findings can serve as a guideline for creating succession plans, recruiting procedures, development, and training of nurses, and improving clinical practices.

Informations de copyright

© 2022. The Authors.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.