Preventing Medication Errors in Healthcare - Nursing Perspective : A Descriptive Literature Review

Abstract

This descriptive literature review was done to describe how to prevent medication errors in nursing. The study aimed to produce new knowledge regarding the prevention of medication errors in nursing that will facilitate the development of tools to prevent medication errors made by nurses. Data was collected from Medline. Nine articles published between 2013 and 2023 were selected. They were screened for relevance using the JBI tool. Inductive content analysis was conducted to analyze the data. According to the findings, organizational practices like the rights of medication administration prevent medication errors. Likewise, the knowledge of nurses and the ability to identify medication errors can prevent errors. Clearly written medication orders were also found to be crucial. Furthermore, the nurses must re-check the medication labels. Similarly, regularly reviewing the medication processes can prevent errors. Also, a culture where the nurses can accept their mistakes can prevent errors. The findings also showed that adequate staff in a shift, manageable workload and training can prevent errors. Finally, there must be resources for medication preparation. Tight schedules at work and lack of time for documentation were found in the study to be challenges in preventing medication errors. Other challenges were verbal handover, when nurses write orders in place of a physician and when physicians do not write orders legibly, in time and update them. The study also identified that the barriers to medication error reporting were challenges in preventing medication errors. Finally, the lack of a favorable physical environment for medication preparation was a challenge. Nurses must be trained to improve their knowledge, skills and attitudes toward medication administration. They must be encouraged to follow the rights of medication administration, double-check with another nurse and follow standard procedures. They must report when an error or near-miss occurs. Adequate facilities and resources must be available for medication preparation without interruption. The originality of this thesis has been checked using Turnitin Originality Check service

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