Medication Errors in Intensive Care Units in the Viewpoint of Nurses: A Descriptive Study

Medication errors commonly occur in clinical nursing. The present study aimed to determine the causes of medication errors, their lack of report, and their frequency in intensive care units (ICUs).

This descriptive and correlational cross-sectional study, 200 nurses working in intensive care units, Iran University of Medical Sciences and Tehran University were selected by stratified random sampling. Data were collected using demographic form and Wakefield medication error reporting tool. Descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) were then analyzed.

For systemic reasons (61.93) and pharmacy reasons (46.18), the highest and lowest mean scores were obtained among the causes of drug error, respectively. It is also observed that the administrative reasons with the mean of 72.52 and the difference of mean with the mean of 52.65 had the highest and the lowest mean score among the reasons for not reporting medication error. Intravenous error averaged 32.07 mean higher than non-venous error averaged 20.67. There was also a significant relationship between sex and patient Safety Culture. Also, there was also a significant relationship between sex, age and job experiences with medication Error Report. Ethical Considerations: This article is the result of an approved research project at Iran University of Medical Science. During the research process, the university's ethical policies were complied with in accordance with the principles of the Helsinki Declaration, including obtaining informed consent from nurses.

According to the results, reducing the incidence of medication error by nurses requires the provision of proper conditions to minimize systemic errors in hospitals. Furthermore, nursing managers must facilitate error reporting for nurses, while meticulously monitoring the administration of drugs by nurses, especially in the case of intravenous medications.