Medication Administration Error Reporting Among Nurses: A Descriptive Qualitative Study

Nurses are integral to the healthcare delivery team (multidisciplinary team). They are involved and play vital roles with responsibilities to ensure the quality of healthcare for their patients. The key to those varied roles is the administration of medication. Depending on the clinical setting, nurses spend up to 40% of their hours on medication administration and its management processes. They are liable to identify and prevent medication administration errors (MAEs) and their consequences. This study aimed to explore the barriers and facilitators to the reporting behavior for MAEs among nurses in Ghana.

A descriptive qualitative cross-sectional study was conducted among nurses in a district catholic hospital in Ghana. The level of nurses’ knowledge of MAEs, causes of such errors, barriers to reporting, and strategies for minimizing errors were assessed. Purposive sampling was used to select a total sample of 20 nurses interviewed face-to-face using an in-depth method. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed thematically.

The study found that all nurses are aware of MAEs, which serve as the basis for decision-making. However, some nurses do not report these errors when they occur. Factors such as workload, stress and tiredness, staff shortage, difficulty calculating drug dosage, inadequate knowledge about specific medications, distractions during administration, and patient-related factors were identified as common causes of MAEs. The study also revealed that hospital management and the potential negative consequences of reporting errors, such as unpleasant reactions, lawsuits, and loss of a job, are significant barriers to reporting.

Regular training workshops should be conducted to update nurses’ knowledge about the importance of reporting medication errors, the reporting process, new medications and their administration, to develop a policy document that promotes a nonblaming, nonpunitive, and supportive learning culture for MAE medic reporting.