The Nurse's Medication Day

Bibliographic Data

ID4675818
AuthorsBonnie Mowinski Jennings (0000-0001-8945-1024, Health Care Consultant, Evans, Georgia, USA, corresponding author), Margarete Sandelowski (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA), Barbara Mark (0000-0002-4500-7957, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA), Barbara A Mark (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Year2011
Volume21
Issue10
Pages1441-1451
Publication date2011-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueQualitative Health Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1049-7323 • E-ISSN: 1552-7557
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1049732311411927
PMID21693688
PMCIDPMC3968850
OpenAlexW2113994119
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited34

The medication administration stage of the medication-use process is especially vulnerable to error because errors are least likely to be caught before reaching the patient. Medication administration, however, remains poorly understood. In this article we describe medication administration as observed in an ethnographic study conducted on one medical unit and one surgical unit. A central finding was that medication administration entailed a complex mixture of varied and often competing demands that temporally structured the nurses' entire workday. Articulation work was evident in time management strategies nurses used to handle demands from institutional policies, technical devices, patients, the physical environment, and the medications themselves. The average number of doses of medication per patient was more than double the number policy groups have indicated. Medication administration is not simply the giving of drugs, nor does it have clearly defined temporal boundaries. Because of its inseparability from other nurses' work, medication administration inherently entails interruption, thereby calling into question the current emphasis on reducing interruptions as a tactic to decrease medication errors

Health care · Medication error · Patient safety · Political science · Healthcare Technology and Patient Monitoring · Medicine · Nursing · Patient Safety and Medication Errors · Pharmaceutical Practices and Patient Outcomes · Psychology

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub