Overview of Medication Administration Errors and Nursing Practices NURS FPX 4020 Assessment 4 Improvement Plan Tool Kit

Through adequate knowledge substantiated with evidence, the nurses and relevant healthcare professionals can implement a safety improvement plan effectively as their concepts are clear with a thorough understanding of the proposed plan. This resource toolkit comprises four major sections, including an overview of medication administration errors and nursing practices, preventing medication administration errors, training nurses on safe medication administration, and technological tools relevant to medication administration. 

Overview of Medication Administration Errors and Nursing Practices

Wondmieneh, A., Alemu, W., Tadele, N., & Demis, A. (2020). Medication administration errors and contributing factors among nurses: A cross-sectional study in tertiary hospitals, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. BMC Nursing, 19(4), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-020-0397-0 

This resource discusses medication administration errors in hospitals in Ethiopia. Moreover, it highlights the risks and contributing factors that persist among healthcare organizations and lead to medication administration errors by nurses. The identified factors leading to the onset of these errors are lack of adequate training among nurses, unavailable guidelines on medication administration, external interruptions, insufficient work experience, and night duty shifts.

This resource is helpful for nurses as they can predict the factors that lead to medication administration errors and gain further insights from this study’s past experiences and data. Moreover, they can use this resource to further educate their colleagues on the factors nurses must be careful about while administering the medications. Lastly, nurses can use the strategies provided by this resource, such as adherence to guidelines during medication administration and training nurses on the safe administration of medications.

Tsegaye, D., Alem, G., Tessema, Z., & Alebachew, W. (2020). Medication administration errors and associated factors among nurses. International Journal of General Medicine, Volume 13(13), 1621–1632. https://doi.org/10.2147/ijgm.s289452 

This article by Tsegaye and colleagues provides an overview of medication administration errors, including prevalence and types of medication administration errors such as errors of wrong dose, wrong time, parenteral route errors, wrong evaluation, and underdose errors. Furthermore, it highlights the work, managerial, and professional-related factors that lead to medication administration errors.

NURS FPX 4020 Assessment 4 Improvement Plan Tool Kit

The factors included a lack of adequate communication, sufficiently trained nurses, interruptions, and unavailability of protocols for medication administration. Nurses can take help from this resource as it guides them on all possible factors that nurses must consider to avoid errors during medication administration. They can use this resource to overcome these factors in their healthcare settings and learn from the information discussed in this article. This will help them prevent medication administration errors due to these risk factors.

Hanson, A., & Haddad, L. M. (2022). Nursing rights of medication administration. StatPearls Publishing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK560654/ 

This resource discusses medication administration from a nursing practice perspective. It provides detailed information on nurses’ role in medication administration, issues of concern, clinical significance, and interdisciplinary interventions for safe medication administration. This resource highlights the nursing rights of medication administration, which nurses must learn and implement to improve patient safety and reduce medication administration errors.

Nurses can use these rights of medication administration by using technologies like barcode medication administration (BCMA) or electronic medical records (EMR) to verify medications. Therefore, this resource can play a vital role in delivering medication administration as they must adhere to the five rights of medication administration.

Preventing Medication Errors

Rodziewicz, T., & Hipskind, J. (2019). Medical error prevention. http://www.saludinfantil.org/Postgrado_Pediatria/Pediatria_Integral/papers/Medical%20Error%20Prevention%20-%20StatPearls%20-%20NCBI%20Bookshelf.pdf