Original ArticleCharacteristics of Medication Errors Made by Students During the Administration Phase: A Descriptive Study
Section snippets
Review of the Literature
Various studies have addressed nursing students' performance in calculating medication doses. It has been well documented that many college students arrive on campus prepared to meet the challenges of higher education with mathematics skills at or below the 7th-grade level (Hutton, 1998). For example, Bindler and Bayne (1984) asserted that basic mathematics proficiency is a prerequisite to nursing functions, including medication calculation and intravenous regulation. They created a mathematics
Design
This descriptive and retrospective design study aimed to identify characteristics of medication errors made by nursing students during the administration phase and as reported in the USP MEDMARX program. In this secondary analysis study, characteristics were elicited through the pick fields of the MEDMARX Medication Error Information Report as selected by employees of facilities subscribing to the MEDMARX program. The intent was to gain more knowledge about student-made medication errors.
Sample and Setting
The
Results
During the 5-year period, 1,305 student-made medication errors originating in the administering node were reported to the MEDMARX. Table 1 shows the frequencies and percentages for student errors on the NCC MERP Index for Categorizing Medication Errors. Fewer than 3% (n = 30) of the errors resulted in patient harm. There were 1,208 records (92.5%) that were associated with a type of error, which are summarized in Table 2. Most medication errors were those of omission, followed by those of
Discussion
We examined medication errors involving students that occurred during the administration phase of the medication use process. Based on the analysis of 1,305 error records, we concluded that medication errors involving students during the administration phase may be more widespread than previously thought. The findings also demonstrate that students have been implicated in errors resulting in harm to patients. Relatively few (n = 30) of the errors resulted in harm; this is consistent with the
Recommendations
Nursing faculty might reconsider the medication administration experiences of students and medication safety in light of these findings. For example, basic nursing education programs could provide or require students to purchase personal digital assistants, loaded with pharmacology textbooks and dose and intravenous flow rate calculation software and convenient for students and faculty reference, at the point of medication administration. Ready access to drug information might prevent errors.
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2020, Nurse Education TodayCitation Excerpt :This study found that the most common types of error committed by nursing students are associated with medication administration. This finding is consistent with the literature, which suggests that this type of error is the most common cause of adverse events associated with undergraduate students (Hewitt et al., 2015; Vaismoradi et al., 2014; Fothergill and Caswell, 2014; Dich et al., 2000; Reid-Searl et al., 2010c; Stolic, 2014; Robinson Wolf et al., 2006; Reid-Searl et al., 2010; Simonsen et al., 2014). This situation may be attributable to inadequate computational skills on the part of the student, leading to inaccurate calculation of dosage, incorrect drug preparation, or erroneous conversion of units of measurement.