Improving patient safety through identifying barriers to reporting medication administration errors among nurses: an integrative review

Kennedy Diema Konlan,Hyunok Kim Do,Agani Afaya

doi:10.1186/s12913-021-07187-5

Abstract

BackgroundThe aim of the third WHO challenge released in 2017 was to attain a global commitment to lessen the severity and to prevent medication-related harm by 50% within the next five years. To achieve this goal, comprehensive identification of barriers to reporting medication errors is imperative.ObjectiveThis review systematically identified and examined the barriers hindering nurses from reporting medication administration errors in the hospital setting.DesignAn integrative review.Review methodsPubMed, Web of Science, EMBASE, and the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) including Google scholar were searched to identify published studies on barriers to medication administration error reporting from January 2016 to December 2020. Two reviewers (AA, and KDK) independently assessed the quality of all the included studies using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT) version 2018.ResultsOf the 10, 929 articles retrieved, 14 studies were included in this study. The main themes and subthemes identified as barriers to reporting medication administration errors after the integration of results from qualitative and quantitative studies were: organisational barriers (inadequate reporting systems, management behaviour, and unclear definition of medication error), and professional and individual barriers (fear of management/colleagues/lawsuit, individual reasons, and inadequate knowledge of errors).ConclusionProviding an enabling environment void of punitive measures and blame culture is imperious for nurses to report medication administration errors. Policymakers, managers, and nurses should agree on a uniform definition of what constitutes medication error to enhance nurses’ ability to report medication administration errors.

Highlights

Improving patient safety remains an ongoing global health challenge for more than two decades after the beginning of the new wave of attention by the United States (US) Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 1999 report “To err is human” [1,2,3,4]
The main themes and subthemes identified as barriers to reporting medication administration errors after the integration of results from qualitative and quantitative studies were: organisational barriers, and professional and individual barriers
Providing an enabling environment void of punitive measures and blame culture is imperious for nurses to report medication administration errors

Summary

Introduction

The aim of the third WHO challenge released in 2017 was to attain a global commitment, involvement, and prevention strategies to lessen the severity and to prevent medication-related harm by 50% within the five years [5,6,7]. It is estimated that each year, 134 million adverse effects occur in hospitals within developing countries resulting in 2.6 million deaths due to unsafe care [8]. The aim of the third WHO challenge released in 2017 was to attain a global commitment to lessen the severity and to prevent medication-related harm by 50% within the five years. To achieve this goal, comprehensive identification of barriers to reporting medication errors is imperative

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion