Marja Härkänen and colleagues examine a study to help nurses reduce the risk of making mistakes when administering medicines

Administering medicAtion is one of the most common interventions in health care, but the complexity of the medication process can lead to unintended outcomes (rozich et al 2003, mcBride-Henry and Foureur 2006, sheu et al 2008). in recent years the use of medicines has grown, and there has been an increase in new products available (ndosi and newell 2008). rapid advances in technology and medicine have improved patient care, but the risk of errors has increased in this complex environment (ndosi and newell 2008, sheu et al 2008). Promoting safety in the medication process is vital because adverse events have significant consequences, such as increasing hospital admissions, prolonging hospital stays, using additional resources, increasing the amount of time staff spend away from work and lowering patient satisfaction. And medication errors can cause patients harm, the result of which can range from slight discomfort to death (Barker et al 2002, Ford et al 2006). nurses care for patients in hospitals around the clock and are usually responsible for administering medication, so they have an important role in detecting, reporting and preventing errors (miller et al 2006). However, nurses also cause errors (Barker et al 2002), so it is vital that they understand and can prevent them (Wakefield et al 2005). information about medication errors and near misses can be used to identify risks and generate safer practice (thomas and Panchagnula 2008). error-reporting systems help gather data about these events (savage et al 2005), the details of which are used in many international studies (Hicks et al 2004, rudman et al 2005, miller et al 2006, Pierson et al 2007, thomas and Panchagnula 2008). However, because these studies have not analysed participants’ views on how to prevent errors, this study was designed to gather this information.