The study, published in the BMJ by a Norwegian hospital, university and national medicines agency last week (April 21), timed 25 nurses and 10 pharmacy technicians preparing medicines in a simulated environment. It revealed that nurses prepared "significantly more" medicines when the drugs had standardised packaging, compared with their original packaging.

The standardised packaging used in the study included "prominent placement of the [drug name] and strength, written in black on a white background, and placed in the upper right corner of the front of the package", the study's authors said.

The redesigned labelling resulted in the proportion of errors dropping from 9.1% to 6.5%, although the study's authors described this as "not significantly different". 

"A larger study may be necessary to verify our findings," they said.

The study also revealed that the hospital pharmacy technicians were “significantly faster” than the nurses when preparing medication in both the original and new packaging, the authors said.

The most frequent errors made during the study involved "preparing single [ingredient] medications instead of the correct fixed-dose combination", followed by dispensing the "wrong formulation and strength", the authors said.

They concluded that ensuring all medication packaging includes prominent placement of the active substances and strengths may reduce time for nurses when preparing medication, without increasing errors.

Read the full study here.