Exploring Nurse Experiences and Perspectives on Medication Administration Errors

Guided questions Answer Template (Please do not Remove the questions)
Guided Question Qualitative Study Quantitative Study
1. Aim and
Significance (5
marks 200 words)
a. What was the aim and
significance of the study?
The main aim of the study by Smeulers et al. (2014)
to explore nurse experiences and perspectives on
medication administration errors. The significance
of research in this area is that findings from this
study can help to tailor specific nursing strategies
that can reduce the likelihood of error. As
medication errors cause harm to patient and lead
to adverse risk event, the results can help to
understand the barriers faced by nurse during
medication administration while leads of violation
or one more of the seven rights of medication
administration. Nurse’s perspective can help to
understand the areas where education and learning
is needed to prevent errors.
The main purpose of the study by Sahay, Hutchinson and East
(2015) was to examine the relationship between workplace
support and relationships and safe medication practice among
graduate nurse. Research study gives the insight that nurses are
more susceptible to make medication errors because of lack of
familiarity with the work environment and high level of
engagement in administering medication during their shift time
(Parry, Barriball & While, 2015). Hence, research done to identify
links between workplace support and safe medication
administration can help to detect whether good workplace
support and relationship can support graduate nurses to
minimize the rate of medication errors or not.
2. Methods (10 marks
700 words)

a. Identify the
research design used
in the study and was
it appropriate for the
issue discussed?
Explorative qualitative research design was used to
collect data related to perception of nurse on
medication administration. Exploratory qualitative
research design is appropriate when the purpose is
to get a better understanding about a research
problem. It favours analysis of details in depth so
that wider idea about the research topic can be
obtained (Creswell & Creswell, 2017). The use of
this research design by Smeulers et al. (2014) is
appropriate as it was focussed on identifying the
cause behind medication error and exploration of
nurse’s perspective can give in depth knowledge
why medication administration errors take place in
clinical setting
Descriptive quantitative research design was used to collect
information on the research topic. Quantitative studies can be
done either by descriptive or experimental method. The purpose
of descriptive approach to find association between research
variables, whereas as the purpose of experimental approach is to
establish causality (Glaser & Strauss, (2017). The use of
exploratory approach was necessary for this research because the
purpose of this study was to explore the relation between two
research variables namely workplace support and safe medication
administration practice. Hence, based on the study objective, the
use of exploratory qualitative approach is considered appropriate
for investigation of the high risk of medication errors in health
care organizations. For this research, several questions were
developed that helped in descriptive analysis of nurse self report
related to medication error and the impact of workplace support
on such error (Sahay, Hutchinson &East, 2015).
b. Discuss the sampling
technique, inclusion and
exclusion criteria used for
the selection of sample in
the study
To select appropriate sample relevant to the study
purpose, Smeulers et al. (2014) used snowball
sampling technique to obtain the name of nurse
from different departments so that nurse with
varying experience and attitude towards
medication safety practices could be recruited. The
As the research focused on exploration of knowledge of graduate
nurse related to the study topic, the respondents were selected
from the database of graduates from three Australian university
school of nursing. Based on the review of graduate nurse who
had active email accounts, the survey link was emailed to
graduates. Sample size of 50 was taken as the minimum limit for

snowball sampling is a non probability sampling
technique where the purpose is to identify study
participants which are hard to find and the existing
study subjects recruit future sample group (Etikan,
Alkassim & Abubakar, 2016). This technique was
used in the research by initially approaching nursing
managers, their quality and safety innovators, and
nursing ward manager. They were then involved in
recruiting desired sample group.
The inclusion criteria for the research were that all
participants must be a registered nurse. The
sampling technique helped to recruit nurses with
diverse experience and education so that varying
perceptive could be collected.
the study and there were 58 recent graduates who completed the
survey using this process. Hence, from the above explanation, it is
understood that the main inclusion criteria was recent graduate
nurse. The above discussion shows that convenience sample was
used to collect data by directly emailing surveys to graduate and
not taking efforts to ensure that nurses are recruited after being
informed regarding the study purpose. No other exclusion criteria
and convenience sampling is a major weakness considering it was
a quantitative method of inquiry. It introduces risk of biases in
research data (Etikan, Alkassim & Abubakar, 2016).
c.Explore the data
collection method and its
appropriateness to the
research design of the
study
The data for the study was collected by means of
semi structured interview with individual
participants. The interview took place for one
month and the duration of the interview was 60–90
minutes. The interview mainly focused on collecting
data related to barriers and facilitators of safe
medication administration and participant’s
reflection on various safety practices (Smeulers et
Only survey was used as a data collection method for this study
and the survey was based on four questions. The four questions
were based on nature and extent of graduate nurse medications,
nature of nurse’s reporting about such errors, nature of
workplace support and relationships and impact of workplace
support on medication errors. The final list of survey questions
was based on 86 items and this mainly focused on identifying all
the four elements mentioned in the above four question. The