Study shows ways to encourage medication error reporting

To encourage medication administration error reporting, leaders should emphasize the benefits of reporting, adopt a non-punitive approach and create a blame-free culture, a study concluded. Published this week in the Agency for Research and Quality’s Patient Safety Network, the authors examined why neonatal intensive care unit nurses made medication administration errors and their reasons for not reporting them. Most of the errors were due to inadequate staffing, followed by look-alike drugs. The most prevalent reason for failing to report medication administration errors was leadership blaming the individual instead of attributing them to system-level reasons. The cross-sectional study used a self-administered questionnaire and was given to 143 nurses in the NICU of five public hospitals. (AHRQ Journal of Patient Safety article, 1/17/24)