Medication Error by Nurses: Systematic Review

Running head: NURSING
Medication Error by Nurses: Systematic Review
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NURSING
Executive Summary
The medication error is the single most avoidable concern underlying the increase in the
overall mortality rate in the hospital and increase in the healthcare coast. The main of the
systematic review is to analyse the causes underlying the medication error by the nurses
under the hospital settings. In order to conduct systematic review, electronic database search
of the literary articles were conducted via use of proper keywords and inclusion and
exclusion criteria. The analysis of the articles highlighted that lack of proper communication
skills, lack of proper training of the nursing professionals and increase in the overall nursing
load are the main reasons promoting medication error like medication administration error
and medication dosage error. So the study objective highlighted from the evidence includes
effect of training and nursing education in reducing medication error and to increase the
overall nursing strength and thereby decreasing nurses: patient ration and overall reduction in
the nursing stress.

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NURSING
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Evidence of the chosen topic......................................................................................................3
Rational for this review..............................................................................................................4
Search strategy...........................................................................................................................4
Inclusion and exclusion criteria.................................................................................................5
Search strategy...........................................................................................................................7
Summary of the evidences.........................................................................................................8
Conclusion from the evidences..................................................................................................9
Study objective arisen from the evidence..................................................................................9
References................................................................................................................................10

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NURSING
Topic: Reasons underlying the prevalence of medication errors by the nursing professionals
under hospital settings: Systematic review
Introduction
Medication error is regarded as the single most avoidable cause underlying the patient
harm (Berdot et al., 2012). This systematic review will aim to examine the reasons
underlying the medication errors by the nursing professionals under the hospital settings. The
systematic review will begin via setting the context around the drug errors. A robust rational
behind the selection of the topic will be presented. Next the systematic review with provided
a detailed methodology employed to find relevant research articles from the electronic
databases. This will be followed via the summary of the evidences and then the systematic
review will end via giving a compact summary stating the reasons for the errors and the
objectives for the future research.
Evidence of the chosen topic
Medicines are commonly used as a clinical intervention in the majority of the
healthcare condition (Ashcroft et al., 2015). Medication error can occur under any of the
three steps underlying the use of the medications. These three steps include prescribing,
dispensing and administration of drugs (Berfot et al., 2012). Yet medication error is regarded
as one of the avoidable causes behind the patient harm. The research conducted by Feleke et
al. (2015) highlighted that one of the major impacts of medication error is increase in patient
mortality, increase in the length of stay in the hospital due to adverse effect of the drug and
increase in the overall medication cost. According to Roughead, Semple and Rosenfeld