Medication administration errors in an intensive care unit in Ethiopia.

Background: Medication administration errors in patient care have been shown to be frequent and serious. Such errors are particularly prevalent in highly technical specialties such as the intensive care unit (ICU). In Ethiopia, the prevalence of medication administration errors in the ICU is not studied.

Objective: To assess medication administration errors in the intensive care unit of Jimma University Specialized Hospital (JUSH), Southwest Ethiopia.

Methods: Prospective observation based cross-sectional study was conducted in the ICU of JUSH from February 7 to March 24, 2011. All medication interventions administered by the nurses to all patients admitted to the ICU during the study period were included in the study. Data were collected by directly observing drug administration by the nurses supplemented with review of medication charts. Data was edited, coded and entered in to SPSS for windows version 16.0. Descriptive statistics was used to measure the magnitude and type of the problem under study.

Results: Prevalence of medication administration errors in the ICU of JUSH was 621 (51.8%). Common administration errors were attributed to wrong timing (30.3%), omission due to unavailability (29.0%) and missed doses (18.3%) among others. Errors associated with antibiotics took the lion's share in medication administration errors (36.7%).

Conclusion: Medication errors at the administration phase were highly prevalent in the ICU of Jimma University Specialized Hospital. Supervision to the nurses administering medications by more experienced ICU nurses or other relevant professionals in regular intervals is helpful in ensuring that medication errors don't occur as frequently as observed in this study.