Identifying the Causes of Medication Error among Nurses in the Intensive Care Unit at King Abdulaziz Hospital

Rehab Bakur Aljefri^1,

¹Critical Care Nursing Department, Fakeeh College for Medical Sciences, Saudi Arabia

Cite this paper:
Rehab Bakur Aljefri. Identifying the Causes of Medication Error among Nurses in the Intensive Care Unit at King Abdulaziz Hospital. American Journal of Nursing Research. 2022; 10(2):67-74. doi: 10.12691/ajnr-10-2-4

Abstract

Medication errors are commonly occurring in critical care and emergency departments transversely the states. This event was largely secondary to a series of effects that ultimately led to an increase in medication errors. To limit and alleviate these errors, it is essential to have a comprehensive knowledge of the medication-use practice in the ICU department and advance plans directed at each step. Almost of nursing time in the ICU is dedicated to medication-related processes and, therefore, nurses’ experiences with causes of those errors are important to elicit. Aim of the study: The study aimed to identify the causes of medication errors among nurses in the intensive care units of King Abdulaziz Hospital located in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Method: A descriptive correlation cross sectional research design was utilized and 150 respondents were conveniently selected to participate in the study using the non-probability sampling technique. Result: The findings shows that the overall mean perception of nurses regarding the root causes of medication errors in the ICU was 3.58 with a SD of 1.07 which indicates that the majority of the identified causes were very rare. Furthermore, it also revealed that the demographic characteristics of the respondents were not significant to their perceived root causes of medication error which is supported by the p-value exceeded the 0.05 significance level. Conclusion: The most common medication admiration errors reported by the nurses in the intensive care units were heavy nurse workloads, interrupted thought processes, lack of medication knowledge, unaware of adverse drug effects, work pressures, poor professional relationships and communication among team members, unfamiliar abbreviations, hesitation to clarify doctors order, and medication names that looks like is necessary. Medication administration errors are a precarious part in patient safety issue and nurses are commonly accountable for administering medication to patients.

Keywords:
medication errors root causes adverse drug effect patient safety

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