Abstract:
Introduction: Medication errors continue to be the major problem that causes morbidity and
mortality and increases costs for healthcare systems. Medication errors are the leading cause
of incidents in the patient safety worldwide.
The aim of the study: This study aimed at assessing the contributing factors to medication
administration errors and barriers to reporting among nurses who work in pediatric units of
selected referral hospitals.
Methods: This study used a quantitative descriptive cross sectional design. A convenience
sampling was used to get a total sample of 151 participants. The data were collected using a
questionnaire. The reliability of the tool was measured by Cronbach‘s alpha and it had 0.86.
Data were analyzed by SPSS version 21. Descriptive statistics and Chi-square test were used.
Results: The completed questionnaires were 149 which translated to the response rate of
98.6%.This study revealed that the majority of the participants were females 113 (75.84%).
Twenty 20 (20.1%) of participants have identified wrong time error. Identified factors to
MAEs were workload or few nurses compared to the number of patients eighty two (55.0%)
and fifty (33.6%) responded that unit staff do not receive in service trainings about new
medication. Whereas barriers to self-reporting were fear to be blamed if something happens to
the patient as a result of the medication administration error eighty eight (59.1%). A strong
association was found between socio demographic data except gender with (p= 0.039).
Experience and marital status revealed as strong association to factors contributing to MAEs
(p=0.001; p=0.000) respectively.
Conclusion: MAEs are committed frequently among the participants. Factors contributing to
MAEs were found in both parties and barriers to self reporting were identified to be the fear
reasons and administrative reasons. Therefore, a non-punitive environment is imperative in
encouraging self-reporting of medication errors and it takes everyone efforts to improve
patient safety by preventing medication administration errors.
