Medication Adminiatration and ADR’s: Statistical Analysis

Published: 13 Sep 2026

This article highlights the importance of adverse drug reactions as a result of medication administration. The national board of health and welfare in Sweden received 1050 reported errors in hospitals and states that 33 of them were related to drug administration for which nurses were held responsible, it is most likely because of the negligence of the staff from the procurement of the drug to its dispensing, compounding and dose management.

There are several type of drug related errors i.e. wrong dose, wrong route of administration, wrong patient and wrong interval of time for dose administration.A retrospective follow up study was conducted which illustrated that 6-16 % of all the hospitalization was because of drug related errors and mortality rate is 3000 per-anum. Every nurse conduct almost one dose related error in 4weeks and the possible reasons for all this is excessive work load, delayed therapy, deviation from normal procedures.

The major barrier in reporting error is reluctance.Collaborative Alliance for Nursing Outcomes (CALNOC) is a registry in United States that plays an essential role in medication administration authenticity, CALNOC stands on a direct assessment method proposed by barker which closely observe the medication errors and barriers in safe practice mproving quality and standards of care provided.

National board of health and welfare Sweden sets certain standards that right dose should be administered at right time to the right patient. Registered nurses are responsible for verifying the details of patient before drug administration and they should sign the prescription after dispensing to the patient. This will significantly reduce the errors and omissions related to prescription. The main purpose of the research study conducted is to evaluate the safe practices to minimize the medication related errors by nurses, to identify the drugs prone to errors and the relative frequency and occurrence of the MA errors.

A cross sectional descriptive study design was implemented coupling direct observations, with time sampling interventions conducted by the experts and reviewed by highly competent observers. Three adults surgical units (from 1000 bed university hospital) were drawn as a sample from the 72 patient- nurse medication administration, which was keenly observed encompassing 306 doses with the minimum possible sample (100/unit), eMAR was implemented and RN was responsible for administration of dose from eMAR.

CALNOC assessment tools were used to characterize the errors and the data was assessed according to the layout provided by CALNOC, flow sheets, charts graphs to validate the info on the route of drug administration as well the possible deviation from doctor’s prescription. This information was later translated into Swedish by the researchers and variables were involved (proper documentation before dose administration).Ethical standards were followed appropriately and descriptive statistics was adopted for analysis of the data obtained on the basis of unit dose.

Amongst all the unit dose observed the ratio of safe practices observed was variable i.e. 9% identity control, 11% was explaining medication to patient and adherence also varied with labelling (25%) that’s deviation from the standards set for safe practice. The tendency of medication administration error was 18% of total doses involved. The most repeated error was observed with the time of drug administration and might be the possible reason for longer hospital stay with side effects from high concentrated dose and relative in appropriate dosage regimen.

The results of the above study highlighted the areas of improvement in safe and effective healthcare practices to minimize the errors and omissions in the MA. This article also highlight the need to train the RN related to MA safety, because registered nurses play critical and essential role in implementation of patient-centered care(Gunningberg, Pöder, Donaldson, & Swenne, 2014). The six safe practices related to right time, right dose, right administration and right patient are the key to safe medication administration.

References

Gunningberg, L., Pöder, U., Donaldson, N., & Swenne, C. L. (2014). Medication administration accuracy: using clinical observation and review of patient records to assess safety and guide performance improvement. https://doi.org/10.1111/jep.12150

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Pediatric Dose Calculator 2026:Better Integration, Dose verification and compounding Alert