Paediatric Medication Paper

Medication being administered in a hospital setting is one of the most critical skills that a nurse must master. Many deaths and poor outcomes happen each year in hospitals due to incorrect medication administration. It is of utmost importance for the nurse to be skilled and proficient in this area for the importance of patient care. In the study about the administration of psychiatric medications the article states there are 7000 deaths per year due to incorrect administration of medications. The setting in the study was in a hospital that had around 900 psychiatric inpatients. There were 50 nurses that participated in the study. There were 4 common themes in the nurses, one was fear of job loss, issues with colleagues, and lawsuits. The second was excusing the error. If there was no harm done to the patient then there was no need to report. The third was knowledge of how to report the error and the exact knowledge of what exactly makes an error. The fourth and last was workload. The amount of work to be done and the time that it took to report. The methods that were used in the study were interviews …show more content…
The method that was used to collected the data was the PMAE survey tool. This tool surveyed random nurses whom self -reported medication errors. The nurses were told that this methodology was confidential. The three themes in the paediatric nurses were workload, ineffective communication, and distraction. According to the results of the study there were 2.3 more medication errors reported on medical floors than in intensive care units. The study showed that most medication is based on adult dosing which causes errors when trying to calculate for children. The workload on medical floors tend to be more hectic than in intensive care units therefore making medication errors more common on