Nurses’ Self-Reported Practices and Perceived Barriers of Medication Administration Safety in State Hospitals in Northern Nigeria

Administering medication is a vital aspect of patients’ treatment and nurses play an essential role in it, with the responsibility of safety during the procedure. Nurse administrators are showing concern about patient safety, and one of the first steps to reduce medication administration errors is assessing the factors contributing to those errors.

The study was descriptive and adopted cross-sectional design. The Medication Administration Safety Assessment Tool and instrument for assessing barriers to medication administration safety were used for data collection. Proportionate and systematic samplings were used in selecting the respondents. Data collected were analysed using SPSS version 26. Chi-square and ANOVA statistical tools were used for inferential analysis.

The majority (40.7%) of the respondents were having Good medication administration safety practices, but 19.1% had poor medication administration safety practices. Majority (41.6%) of the respondents had very low perceived barriers to medication administration safety. There was no significant association between hospital working experience and medication administration safety practices, P>0.05. The professional qualification of the respondents was associated with perceived barriers to medication administration safety, P<0.05.

The medication administration safety practices range from good to very good practices, and there was a considerable number of respondents with poor practices. Moreover, a significant number of respondents perceived the barriers to medication administration safety practices as moderate, high or very high. These call for the need for frequent knowledge update through conferences, workshops and educational forums among nurses. Frequent investigation and mitigation of factors aggravating hospitals’ medication administration errors should be given more emphasis.