PERCEPTION & CONTRIBUTING FACTORS TO MEDICATION ADMINISTRATION & DISTRIBUTION ERRORS AMONG NURSES

Introduction: Unsafe medication practices are the leading causes of avoidable patient harm in healthcare systems across the world. The largest proportion of which occurs during medication administration. Nurses play a significant role in the occurrence as well as preventions of medication administration errors. Objective: To assess perception & contributing factors to medication administration & distribution errors among nurses. Materials & methods: It was descriptive, quantitative, cross-sectional study in nature in which 48 nursing staff included. Self-administered questionnaires were used to collect the data from the participants. Results: There were total 48 nurses having age range 25 years to 36 years old included in the study. In the sample of 48 participants, 58.33% reported that difficulty in hand written orders may cause medication errors; 77.09% participants revealed that confusion about different drugs with similar names also can cause medication administration and distribution errors 14.58% participants reported that low level of perception about medication errors; 66.67% said moderate level and remaining 18.75% reported high level of perception about medication errors. Conclusion: Consequently, moderate level of perception regarding medication administration and medication distribution errors found among most of the respondents. Use of abbreviation, confusion about different drugs with similar names, increase patient to nurse ratio, poor communication between nurse and physician, long working hours, night shift, inadequate unit staff and lack of training regarding prevention of medication errors were the main factors contributing medication administration and distribution errors. Keywords: Perception, medication administration, medication errors, nurses, etc.