Journal Critique on Nurses' Perspectives and Experiences on Medication Safety Practices

Running head: JOURNAL CRITIQUE 1
Journal Critique
Student’s Name
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JOURNAL CRITIQUE 2
Journal Critique
1. Introduction
Maintenance of medical safety is vital. It ensures that patients receive quality, safe,
timely and patient-centered medication. Although medical errors are inevitable, they ought to be
avoided. Typically, medical errors result in adverse health effects and unnecessary additional
medical expenses (Pham et al, 2012). Therefore, medical errors entail any avertable conditions
which could result in irrelevant medication or subsequent patient harm. Medical errors are
approximated to be less than a quarter of all the administered medications. A third of these errors
result to harm on patients (Starmer et al, 2014). Medical administrative errors occur when the
standard norms of clinical administration are breached (Garrouste-Orgeas et al, 2012). They
include the right drug, patient, dose, route, time, documentation and reason.
2. Research problem and importance.
The research problem of this study is quite relevant and helpful. Conventionally, there
exists scanty data concerning the perspectives and experiences of medical practitioners. In
addition, this is in regards to the effective application of safety procedures and avoidance of
medical errors (Senders, 2018). Knowledge concerning these perspectives and experiences will
be imperative in establishing applicable safety processes and their implementation (David et al,
2013). Therefore, the significance of this research is to provide an in-depth analysis regarding
medical experts’ perspectives and encounters so as to steer clear medical errors.
3. Research design and methods.
According to the article, the research design is suitable. The authors have justified the
method utilized in the study. The research was conducted in a university hospital. Each
medication is stored and administration prepared by medical experts mostly nurses. An

JOURNAL CRITIQUE 3
electronic prescription system is utilized by physicians in prescribing medication. Any drug
administrations and prescriptions that are done have to be recorded. Every nurse handles specific
patients to ensure easy monitoring of progress.
The research design also explains how participants were incorporated into the study. A
qualitative investigative research was conducted in nurses. Subsequently, this aimed at obtaining
a comprehensive perspective concerning the operational and management levels. Purposive
sampling designed to getting a greater heterogeneity was used. Foremost, the safety and quality
innovators of nurse managers were requested to contribute to the study. Snowball sampling was
utilized to retrieve the names of nurses in other departments who represent different levels of
seniority and training (Smeulers et al, 2014). In the same token, only registered nurses were
incorporated into the study.
Data collection was done through predetermined interviews. The interviews provided a
wider scope for nurses to express themselves. They could also seek any guidance from the
interviewers. All participants were requested to reflect on the essence of safety practices before
the research was concluded.
The research design observed ethics since the interview process was comprehensively
explained to the participants. Formal written consent was obtained from each person who
participated. Interviews were recorded for future reference and analysis, for instance,
transcription (Smeulers et al, 2014). Consequently, analysis of data was done simultaneously
with the interviews. All interviews were coded separately at the end of each interview. Codes
were interpreted, discussed and compared. In addition, reviewing was performed and conclusions
made. The most applicable themes were identified which relate to nurses perspectives and