Abstract
Background During medication administration process, including preparation, administration, and documentation, there is high proportion of work interruption that results in medication administration errors that consequently affect the safety of patients. Thus, the main purpose of this study was to assess the prevalence of work interruption and associated factors during medication administration process. Methods A prospective, observation-based, cross-sectional study was conducted on 278 nurses. Structure observational sheet was utilized to collect data. EPI Info version 3.5.3 and SPSS version 20 software were utilized for data entry and analysis, respectively. Binary and multivariable logistic regression were fitted to identify the associated factors using an odds ratio and 95% CI. Results The incidence of work interruption was found to be 1,152 during medication administration process. Of this, 579 (50.3%) were major/severe work interruptions. Unit of work, day of the week, professional experience, perceived severity of work interruption, source/initiator of interruption, and secondary tasks were factors significantly associated with major work interruptions at p < 0.05. Conclusion In this study, more than half of work interruption was major/severe. Thus, the authors suggest raising the awareness of nurses regarding the severity of work interruptions, with special attention to those who have lower work experience, sources of interruption, and secondary tasks by assigning additional nurses who manage secondary tasks and supportive supervision.
Highlights
During medication administration process, including preparation, administration, and documentation, there is high proportion of work interruption that results in medication administration errors that affect the safety of patients
Work interruptions (WIs) are a break in the continuity of task performance [10] and result in the task being unexpectedly suspended at some step prior to completion [11] due to distraction or intrusion of unplanned secondary tasks or demands [7, 12, 13]
Studies showed that nurses are interrupted at a rate of 5.5 to 14 work interruptions/hr [15, 16], these causing a high level of inefficiency as nursing was not meeting its goal of delivering all medication within 60 minutes of prescribed acceptable time and creating a significant risk that distracted/interrupted nurses leading to them making mistakes or errors [17]
Summary
During medication administration process, including preparation, administration, and documentation, there is high proportion of work interruption that results in medication administration errors that affect the safety of patients. The main purpose of this study was to assess the prevalence of work interruption and associated factors during medication administration process. Day of the week, professional experience, perceived severity of work interruption, source/initiator of interruption, and secondary tasks were factors significantly associated with major work interruptions at p < 0.05. Work interruptions during the medication administration process usually lead to clinical errors in nursing practice with up to 88.9% having negative consequences [18]. Work interruptions associated with a 12.1% increase in procedural failures and a 12.7% increase in clinical errors [19] and contributed to an average of 2.1hour time loss per day, and the subsequent lost productivity
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