Qualitative and Quantitative Study on Medication Safety

This study examines the aim, methods, data analysis, and results of a qualitative and quantitative study on medication safety. It discusses the sampling technique, data collection method, and data analysis used in the study. The findings highlight the impact of disruptive nurse behavior on safe medication practices and recommend the development of evidence-based safety practices for nurses.

Guided questions Answer Template (Please do not Remove the questions)
Guided Question Qualitative Study Quantitative Study
1. Aim andSignificance
(5 marks 200 words)
a. What was the aimand
significance ofthe study?
2. Methods (10 marks
700 words)
a. Identify the
research design used
in the study and was
it appropriate for the
issue discussed?
b. Discuss the sampling
technique, inclusion and
exclusion criteria used for
the selection of sample in
the study
Semi structured interviews were used for
sampling of data. Each interview lasted for
60-90 minutes. Purposive sampling was
used which involved high level of
heterogeneity. The nursing managers,
nurses and quality safety innovators were
contacted through emails by two
researchers. They were requested to take
Data was sampled from databases of three Australian
Universities of nursing, and the recent graduates were
contacted through emails. The link of the survey was
sent to the graduates by the administrative heads of
each university, the research team was not involved
directly with the students. Email reminders were sent
through the same method to improve the rates of
response. Total 58 nursing graduates completed the

part in the study to improve the safety of
medication administration. The snowball
sampling was done to get the names of
other nurses from other departments. Only
registered nurses were included in the
sampling. Only the nurses were contacted
through emails and other criteria to
approach them were excluded.
survey. Only the recent graduates of 3 Australian
Universities were included in the survey. The students
doing their graduation or which have completed the
course long back were excluded. The participants were
all from the nursing course, and other courses were
excluded.
c.Explore the data
collection method and its
appropriateness to the
research design of the
study
Data collection method through semi
structured interviews is appropriate to
collect the genuine and free responses of
the participants under the structured
guidance of interviewer. A predesigned
topic list was there to ask the questions
from the nurses which was based on the
literature from Grol. Participants were
asked to reply about the different safety
practices at their settings. It was
appropriate to fetch the personal responses
and experiences of the participants and
evaluate the medication practices and
safety.
Data collection was done by the university
administration without any direct involvement of the
researchers. Survey links were sent to the participants
through emails along with email reminders after certain
time. The online surveys are quantitative methods of
collecting the data from the participants requesting
them to complete a questionnaire over the link. Such
method has relatively low data collection cost and has
ease of administration (Market Street Research, 2019).
It is also a good strategy to collect negative feedback
from captive audience, as the participants are free from
any pressure from the seniors and can answer the
responses independently without any influence. The
questionnaires designed for online surveys are smaller

in length and consist of predominantly the close ended
questions.
3. Data analysis and
results (10 marks
600 words)
a.How was the data
analysed and was it
appropriate for the study?
Data was analysed parallel with the
interviews, After every interview the data
was coded independently and the codes
were compared and analysed for creating
coding tree. The consensus meetings and
the codings were performed recurrently for
the first 15 interviews. The coding for the
remaining 5 interviews was divided with
one author reviewing and the other coding.
Sorting and analysis of test fragments was
done as per the identified themes.
Consensus meetings are largely used to
collect data over the topics of general
agreements in which there is no empirical
evidences to assist the future actions or
decisions. They are also used to forecast
the decision implications and future events
. In this study, data was analysed through Statistic
Package for Social Sciences version 20. Descriptive
statistics was applied on the data collected from online
survey to identify the logical responses and missing
data. The strength of association between the three
variables (medication errors, safe medication practice and
workplace relationships) was investigated using
frequency distribution and spearman’s correlation (SC).
SC is a technique implemented to evaluate the
direction and strength of a relationship between the two
or three variable factors (Shuttleworth, 2018). In this
study SC found that unsupportive workplace
relationships are inversely associated with medication
errors and erosion of safe medication practices.
It was appropriate for the study for targeting a particular
section of people, assessing their opinions and genuine
views of genuine cross section of the nurses, and

and treatment plans at the medical care
settings (Waggoner,2016)
finding correlation between the three.
b.What were the
findings/results of the
study?
20 Nurses were approached and three
themes were analysed namely: Nurses role
and responsibilities in medication safety,
nurses’ ability to work in safe practices and
their acceptance of safe practices. The
factors affecting the nurses ability to work
safely were identified as awareness of the
risk of medication errors and the
circumstances in which the nurse work.
The result of the study was: An increase in disruptive
nurse and physician behaviour ruins the safety of
medication among the graduate nurses. Study
identified the importance of disruptive nurse behaviour
in eroding the safe medication practices.
c.Discuss the limitations
and recommendations of
the study?
The findings of the qualitative study could
be transferrable and may be relevant to
other healthcare settings as well. The
factors like work pressure and dependency
of others might influence the practice
environment of the settings which might
impact the nurses role to perform the
essential functions. Ethical approval was
also not considered necessary for the
study. The study recommends that the role
of nurses should be supported by evidence
The participants were recent graduates who were
contacted through emails. It is possible that they did
not access their email accounts. Another limitation was
convenient sample, shortage of information on non
responders and use of self report. The self reported
data could be inaccurate and the sample of
respondents’ population may not reflect the people
under study.

based safety practices. The safety
principles should be addressed by the
nursing managers to develop a
professional practice environment with
consistent professional development.
References
Market Street Research (2019). Mail Surveys. Retrieved from http://marketstreetresearch.com/research-methods/mail-surveys/
Shuttleworth,M.(2018). Survey Research Design. Retrieved from https://explorable.com/survey-research-design
Waggoner,J.(2016). Is There a Consensus on Consensus Methodology? Descriptions and Recommendations for Future Consensus Research.
Acad Med. 91 (5). 663–668