بررسی بروز اشتباهات دارویی پرستاران در بخش مراقبت ویژه

Background and purpose: Medication errors today are discussed as one of the main concerns of the health care systems and are used as an indicator for determining the level of patients safety in hospitals. This study was conducted with the purpose of evaluating medical errors among intensive care nurses. Materials and methods: In this descriptive study the research population composed of nurses working in intensive care units of Imam Khomeini Hospital Complex, Tehran, 2011. 64 nurses were randomly selected and asked to answer to a researcher made questionnaire. The data was analyzed by SPSS version 16 using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results: 73.43%, 42.55% and 57.45% of nurses reported the occurrence, verge of occurrence and not occurrence of medical errors, respectively. The most common type of medication errors were infusion rate and doses of drugs due the drug’s abbreviated names and existence of similarities among drug's names. The most important causes of medication errors were lack of pharmacological information. Conclusion: Since the risk of medication errors among nurses is high, therefore, retaining courses on pharmacological information, modification of educational curriculum, encouraging nurses to report medical errors and also encouraging hospital managers to give positive response to errors are suggested.