Prevention of medication errors made by nurses in clinical practice

Background: Medication administration to patients is a part of clinical nursing practice with high risk of errors occurrence. The causing factors of medication errors are either individual or systemic. In order to prevent errors before, the establishment of protective measures is pivotal. Purpose: To explore the protective measures taken by nurses to prevent medication errors in clinical practice. Method and material: A search of Medline, Science Direct and Cochrane Library was conducted to retrieve literature published from January 2000 until August 2011. Results: The protective measures against medication errors are related with the preparation and administration of medications, the dosing calculations skills of nurses, the nursing education, the oral medication orders, the interdisciplinary collaboration, the manager nurses and changes in health systems’ issues relevant with medication management. Conclusions: This review paper summarizes the preventive measures of medication errors made by nurses. As it is obvious, there is a plenty of factors that need to be applied in health units to succeed low medication error rate. Because of the significance of the subject, further research is warranted to prove the effectiveness of every measure in the prevention of medication errors.

Author(s): Athanasakis Efstratios

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