Title
Association of medication errors with drug classifications, clinical units, and consequence of errors: Are they related?
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2017
Publication Title
Applied Nursing Research
Volume
33
First page number:
180
Last page number:
185
Abstract
Registered nurses (RNs) play an important role in safe medication administration and patient safety. This study examined a total of 1276 medication error (ME) incident reports made by RNs in hospital inpatient settings in the southwestern region of the United States. The most common drug class associated with MEs was cardiovascular drugs (24.7%). Among this class, anticoagulants had the most errors (11.3%). The antimicrobials was the second most common drug class associated with errors (19.1%) and vancomycin was the most common antimicrobial that caused errors in this category (6.1%). MEs occurred more frequently in the medical-surgical and intensive care units than any other hospital units. Ten percent of MEs reached the patients with harm and 11% reached the patients with increased monitoring. Understanding the contributing factors related to MEs, addressing and eliminating risk of errors across hospital units, and providing education and resources for nurses may help reduce MEs. © 2016 Elsevier Inc.
Language
english
Repository Citation
Muroi, M.,
Shen, J. J.,
Angosta, A.
(2017).
Association of medication errors with drug classifications, clinical units, and consequence of errors: Are they related?.
Applied Nursing Research, 33
180-185.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apnr.2016.12.002