Relationship Between Pharmaceutical Knowledge and Probability of Medication Errors Among Nurses: A Cross-sectional Study in the Northwest of Iran in 2020

Patient safety is a major concern for health care professionals. Medication errors have been considered a major indicator of health care quality. The lack of pharmacological knowledge is a cause of medication error among nurses.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between pharmacological knowledge and the probability of medical errors in nurses working in Urmia hospitals in 2020.

This cross-sectional study included 490 nurses randomly selected from among those working in hospitals of Urmia in 2020. The data collection tool was a multiple-choice questionnaire about knowledge and pharmacological skills consisting of 3 sections: demographic information, nurses’ drug knowledge, and the confidence level of response in nurses. To analyze questions and hypotheses via SPSS version 21, the t-test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were employed.

The highest pharmaceutical knowledge scores of nurses were related to methods of administration (2.9 ± 1.01 [72.56%]), and the lowest score was related to drug management (1.05 ± 0.63 [52.84%]). The mean of error probability was very low in 28.81% of nurses, low in 37.66%, high in 11.34%, and very high in 22.85%. Pharmaceutical knowledge had a significant relationship with gender, wards, type of hospital, and number of children (P < 0.05 for all).

Since the nurses’ level of pharmaceutical knowledge has an important role in the correct prescription of medicine, we suggest that nurse managers and educational supervisors in the field of nursing use in-service training programs and prepare training booklets and posters to promote nurses’ pharmaceutical knowledge in this field.