Background

Canada has a shortage of registered nurses (RNs), pre-dicted to increase to almost 60,000 full-time equivalents (FTEs) by 2022. [1] Professionals in the field suggest the national demand for nurses is masked by delayed retire-ments and heavy workloads. [2] Public-sector health-care nurses worked 21.54 million hours of paid and unpaid overtime in 2012 equal to 11,900 FTE jobs at a cost of C$925.5 million annually [3]. Strong links have been found in Canada between medication errors and the nurses’ workplace environment including working overtime, role overload, and perceived staffing shortages [4]. Increasing RN productivity by one percent per year would reduce the nurse shortage by nearly 50 % by 2022 [1] and has the potential to cut nurse overtime. Demand for hospital and office-based intravenous in-fusion therapy will grow with an aging demographic. Canadian Blood Services (CBS) reports 8.3 % annual growt