Skills and knowledge
The skills and knowledge required to
administer medication safely in health care have
changed, particularly in light of complexities
involved in medicines management previously
discussed. Studies have called for an increase
in pharmacological education within nurse
education (Morrison-Griffiths et al 2002,
Ndosi and Newell 2008). The complexity
of administering medications indicates that
pharmacological knowledge is required to support
the administration of drugs and clinical decision
making involved in medicines management.
A whole system approach to medication
management should be adopted, providing
education on a range of skills, not just drug
calculations. This has implications for the skills
and knowledge taught to pre-registration nurses
(Patient Safety First 2010, Wright 2012b) and is an
area only touched on briefly in the Standards for
Pre-registration Nursing Education (Nursing and
Midwifery Council 2010).
Conclusion
Changes in medicines management, particularly
relating to administration, suggest the need to
consider not only the nurse’s role, but also a whole
system approach, including the context and setting
in which this task takes place. Nurses need to be
aware of the constraints and external influences that
could affect their ability to administer medicines.
It is not helpful to blame individual nurses for
medication errors. Instead, all factors, including
those that involve processes and the organisation,
should be considered in terms of how they could
have contributed to the error. Only when the true
cause of an error and all contributing factors have
been considered, can effective solutions be put in
place to reduce medicine-related error rates NS