A two-year study of medication management in assisted living communities yielded a report from researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) and the Center for Excellence in Assisted Living (CEAL). Medication Administration in Assisted Living compares medication errors involving nurses and non-nurse medication technicians in 11 assisted living communities in South Carolina and Tennessee.
South Carolina allows unlicensed technicians to administer medications while Tennessee requires licensed nurses to carry out this task. Fewer than three percent of medication administrations observed by researchers involved errors with moderateto- significant potential to cause harm. Trained technicians and nurses had about the same rate of serious medication errors while staff members with less training, who were assigned to help residents administer their own medications, caused the most number of serious medication errors.