Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1 Department of Critical Care Nursing, Qazvin University of Medical Sciences, Qazvin, Iran
2 Department of Nursing, Khorasgan (Isfahan) Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran
Abstract
Objective: Medication errors are the most common medical errors, which may result in
some complications for patients. This study was carried out to investigate what influence
medication errors by nurses from their viewpoint.
Methods: In this descriptive study, 150 nurses who were working in Qazvin Medical
University teaching hospitals were selected by proportional random sampling, and data
were collected by means of a researcher‑made questionnaire including demographic
attributes (age, gender, working experience,…), and contributing factors in medication
errors (in three categories including nurse‑related, management‑related, and
environment‑related factors).
Findings: The mean age of the participant nurses was 30.7 ± 6.5 years. Most of them (87.1%)
were female with a Bachelor of Sciences degree (86.7%) in nursing. The mean of their
overtime working was 64.8 ± 38 h/month. The results showed that the nurse‑related factors
are the most effective factors (55.44 ± 9.14) while the factors related to the management
system (52.84 ± 11.24) and the ward environment (44.0 ± 10.89) are respectively less effective.
The difference between these three groups was significant (P = 0.000). In each aforementioned
category, the most effective factor on medication error (ranked from the most effective
to the least effective) were as follow: The nurse’s inadequate attention (98.7%), the errors
occurring in the transfer of medication orders from the patient’s file to kardex (96.6%) and
the ward’s heavy workload (86.7%).
Conclusion: In this study nurse‑related factors were the most effective factors on
medication errors, but nurses are one of the members of health‑care providing team, so their
performance must be considered in the context of the health‑care system like work force
condition, rules and regulations, drug manufacturing that might impact nurses performance,
so it could not be possible to prevent medication errors without paying attention to our
health‑care system in a holistic approach.
Keywords
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