Patient's Safety and Nurse's Medication Administration Errors

Medication errors are one of the most common errors related to patients’ safety. The study was carried on to investigate medication errors by nurses in Qazvin university hospitals. In this descriptive study، 150 nurses who were working in 4 Qazvin medical university teaching hospitals were selected by proportional random sampling، and data were collected by a researcher-made questionnaire including demographic characteristics، employment information and nurses'' medication errors. The mean of the participating nurses’ age was 30. 7± 6. 5 years and their overwork time mean was 64. 2 ± 38 hours per month. Medication errors had been made by 40. 8% of the nurses. The most common types of reported errors were prescribing Medicine to wrong patient. The most common causes were inaccuracy (41%)، ward crowdedness (13. 1%)، physician and nurses'' illegible handwriting (11. 5%). A medication error was occurred the most for Antibiotics (67%). 81. 97% of the nurses had orally reported their error only to their head nurses or their colleagues (42%). Data analysis showed no significant relation between nurses’ demographic and employment characteristics with medication errors. This study showed that medication administration error was common، so for prevents it and protect patient safety، we suggest improve working conditions for nurses، improve nurses’ pharmacological knowledge، encourage nurses to report their errors، promoting culture patient safety and set up a system to record medical errors.