Medication errors and associated factors as perceived by nurses working at the national referral hospital in Bhutan

Abstract

Introduction: A common patient safety issue is medication error and this has remained a serious problem in hospital settings. Medication error occurs at any point of medication process: prescription, transcription, dispensing, and administration. Administration error is the most common type of error occurring among nurses; although nurses play a vital role in preventing harms of prescription
and dispensing errors from reaching the patient. Therefore, this study was aimed at assessing medication errors and associated factors as perceived by nurses.

Methods: The study was conducted at a tertiary hospital in Bhutan and 225 nurses participated through self-reported questionnaire. Data were double entered and validated in Epidata and analyzed using descriptive commands of statistical software STATA.

Results: Among total participants of N = 225, 62.7% reported to have experienced medication error in past six months. Common type of error experienced were omission of dose; wrong time; wrong dose, and administering drugs without physician’s order. Nurses in intensive care units and those caring for pediatric patients reported experiencing more errors. The perceived factors were look-alike drugs, many patients with similar medicines, more medicines to single patient, and oral instructions and acronyms in prescription.

Conclusions: The nurses reported to have experienced quite a high rate of medication error. The results may be used by relevant stakeholders in preventing and reducing medication errors, the biggest challenge of patient safety in hospital settings.