Probably tells us what we already know – and likely underestimates the problem.
These authors take a retrospective look at all the reported medication errors between 2000 and 2005, and then try to associate increased errors with the involvement of a temporary staff member. The problem is, they don’t actually have staffing documents that report which employees are temporary – they rely on the population of a QA field listing “contributing factors”, under which temporary staff is an option. So, you can dismiss this as a bit of garbage-in/garbage-out depending on how accurate the reporting is – but, I figure, if anything, people will forget to implicate temporary staffing more frequently than not.
More interesting – and potentially confounding re: temporary vs. permanent – are the perceived reported reasons behind the medication error. Temporary staff were more likely to be reported to have knowledge deficits, performance deficits, and fail to follow appropriate procedures. I might read into that data that it’s easier for an unfamiliar temp to appear knowledge-deficient, although that’s just my own imagination.
From a risk management standpoint, the solution seems to be: whatever the retention costs of your permanent staff members, they are almost assuredly lower than the costs associated with the errors inflicted upon patients by temps.
“Are Temporary Staff Associated with More Severe Emergency Department Medication Errors?”