Training Strategies: Effect on the Nurse Interns' Medication Administration Safety

Abstract

Background: Medication administration is an important part of delivering quality nursing care. The nurse intern should follow the specific guidelines to enhance their medication administration safety. Aim: The study aims to assess the effect of training strategies on the nurse intern's medication administration safety. The research hypothesis was that the implementation of the training strategies affect on the nurse intern's medication administration safety. Subjects and methods: The study was conducted at Ain Shams University Hospitals using a pre-experimental one group pretest, posttest design on 90 nurse intern. Three tools were used in data collection, namely medication administration knowledge questionnaire, an observational checklist for safety performance, and an attitude rating scale. Results: The results revealed that none of the interns had satisfactory knowledge in pretest; this significantly improved after implementation of guidelines (52.2%) also in follow up phase (58.9%). The pre-intervention adequate practice was 28.9%; it significantly improved to 100.0% at the post phase, and slightly declined to 97.0% at the follow-up phase. For attitude, it was positive among 75.6% of interns at the pre phase, and significantly increased to 96.0% at post phase, and to 100.0% at follow up phase. In multivariate analysis, the guidelines were the main independent positive predictor of nurse interns’ knowledge, attitude, and practice scores. Conclusion: The implementation of the training strategies led to significant improvements in nurse interns’ knowledge, practice and attitude, which leads to accepting the predetermined study hypothesis. Recommendations: The developed guidelines should be implemented in nursing internship orientation programs. These programs should give more emphasis to medication administration knowledge and practice with more focus on identified gaps and deficiencies. Further research is proposed to investigate the effects of different training styles, and the distractions and barriers that may increase nurse intern’s risk of committing medication administration errors.