Nurses’ experiences and perceptions of medication administration errors

Abstract

Background and objective: Medication administration errors are the most common medical errors that happen in hospital settings. This study aimed to find out the most common types of medication administration errors done by the hospital nurses and identifying factors that lead to medication administration errors. Methods: This cross-sectional survey was conducted across Erbil teaching hospitals over a period of three months from June 2016 to September 2016. A convenience sample of 250 nurses who were working in acute, subacute, and general wards and had direct contact with the medication administration were included in this study. Data were collected using a self-reported questionnaire. Results: According to this study the most common types of medication errors were, noticing allergy after drugs administration and administering drugs at a wrong time. The highest leading factors of medication administration errors were illegible medication orders of the physicians, lack of adequate staffing and workload. High statistical differences were found between the frequency of medication administration errors with nurses’ educational level, overall working experience, and nurses understanding language. Conclusion: This study concluded that medication administration errors have multiple causes and types of errors are various.