High Alert Medications: Effect of Nursing Guidelineson Internship Nursing Students'Performance

Abstract

High-alert medications (HAM) carry a higher risk of harm than other medications and errors in the administration of HAM can have catastrophic clinical outcomes. Nursing students are more exposed to contact with high alert medication during clinical experience so they need to improve their performance related to such group of medications to ensure safe medication practices and to eliminate medication errors that cause harm to patients.Aim: this study was conducted to evaluate the effect of high alert medications guidelines on internship nursing students' performance.Study design: a quasi experimental study; Subject: A purposive subject of forty (40) internship nursing students in intensive care units within three months duration was recruited from the respiratory intensive care units and coronary care units at Ain Shams University Hospital. Tools: (1) high alert medication self administered questionnaire, (2) nurses' practice and attitude observational checklist were applied in 2 phases (pre & post). Results: After demonstration of guidelines regarding high alert medications, there were significant improvements in the level of performance of internship nursing students P 0.05.Conclusion: nursing guidelines had statistically significant positive effect on internship nursing students' performance regarding high alert medications. Recommendation: The periodic refreshing in-service training courses should be provided to internship nursing students in order to keep them of updating knowledge and practice regarding high alert medications.