Nurses’ Perception of Medication Administration Errors

Ahmad E. Aboshaiqah^1,

¹Vice Dean for Academic Affairs, Director of Research Center, College of Nursing, King Saud University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Riyadh

Cite this paper:
Ahmad E. Aboshaiqah. Nurses’ Perception of Medication Administration Errors. American Journal of Nursing Research. 2014; 2(4):63-67. doi: 10.12691/ajnr-2-4-2

Abstract

Background: medication administration error (MAE) is one main component for safety healthcare services. The purpose of this study is to investigative factors associated with nurses’ medication administration errors. Design: A descriptive, correlational, cross-sectional design was used. Methods: 309 nurses at two regional hospitals we included and 288 hospital records of medication error analyzed. Medication administration error checklist and hospital records of medication errors were employed to measure the key variables. Results: rate of medication error among nurses was 1.4 times per month (SD = 1.3). The most common factors associated with errors were “Unit staffs do not receive enough in services on new medications” (69.6%, n = 215) and “Poor communication between nurses and physicians” (65.4%, n = 202), while the lowest reported factors was “Physicians change orders frequently” (23.3%, n = 72) and “Physicians' medication orders are not clear” (24.9, n =77). Items analysis also showed that miscommunication with physicians (M=4.51), work overload (staffing) (M= 4.42) had the highest means among all factors. The most reported type of error is the wrong timing of medication administration (30.9%, n = 89). Conclusion: communication, unclear medication orders, workload and medication pancakes were the main factors associate with Medication administration errors.

Keywords:
medication administration errors nurses

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