Aim: To assess if and how many patients admitted to hospital could receive the drug therapy via natural route by specialized nurses aids (OSSc).
Methods: Focus group to identify the items of an assessment instrument to select patients eligible to receive drug therapy from OSSc, validation (face validity, test retest, interrater reliability and factorial analysis) and implementation on 227 patients admitted to medical and surgical wards.
Results: During admission 106/227 patients (46.5%) could receive the therapy from OSSc for at least one day: 21 (9.2%) at admission, 73 (32.1%) after 4 days and 12 (11.3%) in the following days, but 29/106 (27.3%) formerly eligible patients change their condition and therapy should be administered by nurses. On average in medical wards 7.7 patients/day would be eligible while only 2.6 in surgery.
Conclusions: The delegation of drug therapy in acute hospitals to OSSc seems unlikely for patients complexity and the need of daily assessments and adjustments. Nurses should each time select eligible patients guaranteeing the necessary supervision. This extra workload is not affordable.