A Study to Assess the Effect of Critical Pathway as Preventive Strategy on Medication Errors Upon the Level of Knowledge Practice and Reduction of Medication Errors among Nurses at Apollo Speciality Hospitals Chennai

Abstract

1. To assess the knowledge on medication errors, practice regarding medication process and various routes of medication administration of control and study group of nurses. 2. To evaluate the effect of critical pathway as preventive strategy on medication errors upon the knowledge by comparing the pre -test and post-test knowledge scores of control and study group of nurses. 3. To evaluate the effect of critical pathway as preventive strategy on medication errors upon the practice by comparing the practice scores of post- test1 and post-test 2 of control and study group of nurses. The review of literature was collected by health care databases; through: MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, Cochrane Effective Practice, Sciencedirect, Pubmed, Proquest and Organization of Care Group reviews, Google and Google Scholar, and hand searched references of included articles. The conceptual framework based on king s Goal attainment Model. The pilot study was conducted to assess the feasibility and researchability of the study. The main study was conducted among 350 nurses working in Apollo Speciality Hospital, Chennai. regarding medication administration process with true experimental design. Nurses are most involved in safe medication administration process, although they provide a vital function in detecting and preventing medication errors that occurred in the prescribing, transcribing, dispensing and administration stages. Research addressing the complex process of medication use in hospitals is urgently needed and requires a new approach to produce valid knowledge from studies done in this field to equip nurses with updated knowledge and skill thus to enhance Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) to deliver optimum standardized health care services to patients. Quality improvements in decreasing medication administration medication errors made by nursing staff in an academic medical center hospital: a trend analysis during the journey to Joint Commission International accreditation and in the post-accreditation era to enhance patient safety.