3.5 Medication Errors V2
Providing safe nursing care can be a challenge with the number of clients assigned to each nurse and all the complex health issues they have, including multiple medications and treatments. When adding in factors such as nurse fatigue and short staffing, it is understandable that a medication error can occur.
Medication errors are the most common and preventable cause of patient injury (Tariq et al, 2024). They can occur at any stage of the process of delivering a medication, from prescribing, transcribing, dispensing, and administering the medication. Medication errors can occur with any healthcare professional involved with medications, including prescribers (physicians, nurse practitioners), nurses (LPNs, RNs, RPNs), pharmacists, and other members of the healthcare team such as healthcare assistants.
Medications errors are called an adverse drug event. This is defined as an undesirable and potentially harmful action caused by the administration of a medication (Adams et al., 2018). Adverse drug events is an umbrella term that includes all medication adverse events, that includes med errors and adverse reactions such as side effects, allergic reactions and idiosyncratic reactions. See Monitoring for Effects unit 1.11 for more information on these terms.
For nurses, errors typically involve administering the wrong dose or drug, using the wrong route, improper administration, or giving a medication to the wrong client. The outcome of these errors can range from no effect on the client to life-threatening injury, but fortunately, most errors cause no harm to the client. ‘Near miss’ events are situations or errors that place clients at risk but are recognized and managed before the client is affected. For example, a nurse prepares a medication for a client, and prior to administering the medication, recognizes they have the wrong dose.
References
Adams, M. P., Urban, C. Q., El-Hussein, M., Osuji, J. & King, S. (2018). Pharmacology for nurses. A pathophysiological approach (2nd Canadian ed.). Pearson.
Tariq, R. A., Vashisht, R., Sinha, A., & Scherbak, Y. (2024). Medication dispensing errors and prevention. StatPearls. Retrieved October 29, 2025, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519065/
Image:
3.5a Adverse Drug Event (Sheila Odubote/ TRU Open Press)
