Abstract
Background: Medication errors can occur at any of the three steps of the medication use process: prescribing, dispensing and administration. We aimed to study drug administration errors and different factors responsible for drug administration errors.
Objective: To study different factors responsible for drug administration errors.
Methods: A prospective observational study was carried out for a period of one year to study drug administration errors and factors responsible for these errors at Sher– I – Kashmir institute of medical sciences Soura Srinagar. Administration of drugs was observed and compared with concerned patient’s prescription. Any deviation between administration and prescription was taken as error.
To study factors responsible for drug administration errors, the reasons noted by researcher for these errors were noted down. An interview of the staff members who were observed for drug administration errors, nursing administrators, and doctors for reasons of such errors was conducted at the end of study. The demographic details of the staff including age, qualification, experience were taken from hospital administration.
Results: A total of 4752 drug administrations were observed involving 312 drug rounds and 138 staff members. In a total of 4752 drug administrations, 592 errors were noticed. Among these drug administrations 536 dosages had one error, 16 had two errors and 8 had three errors.
The most common reasons noticed by researcher were interruptions during drug rounds, shortage of staff, and lack of communication between healthcare professionals among themselves as well as with patients. The major reasons cited by staff as well as doctors were excess workload, interruptions and poor communication. Other less common reasons were fatigue, stress, knowledge deficit, miscalculation of dose etc. There was no significant effect of gender and age of staff on the occurrence of medication administration errors. However the error rate was less with more qualified and experienced staff.
Conclusion: Drug administration errors need to be reduced by identifying the factors responsible for these errors.
Keywords: Medication Administration Errors.
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Corresponding Author
Sajad Hussain Bhat
Senior Resident Hospital Administration
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.18535/jmscr/v5i2.05
