Summary
Up to one in five medication administrations in Australian hospitals involve an error.
As registered nurses (RNs) are at the forefront of medication administration, they
have been the focus of attempts to reduce errors. Given that nursing students have
reported errors or experiences of near misses, their practices, as well as the supervision they receive from RNs, also deserves
investigation. The aim of this study was to investigate student nurses’ experiences
of supervision while administering medications. Students (N = 45) completed a questionnaire on their supervision experiences while administering
medications. The findings revealed that 88% of students agreed that they had been
directly supervised during the entirety of administration procedures. Although 7%
of students reported not receiving supervision throughout medication administration,
higher percentages of students indicated that they received lower levels of supervision
when wards were busy (66%), when they felt under pressure to comply with the wishes
of RNs (40%), when students had been in clinical settings for extended periods of
time (51%), and when the RNs trusted the student nurses (37%). Approximately one third
(29%) of student nurses disagreed that RNs followed the six rights when administering medications. These findings suggest that student nurses are not
always adequately supervised and are at times administering medications outside the
parameters of the law. Healthcare organisations need to adapt their policies and practices
to ensure that the legal requirements surrounding student nurse administration of
medications are being met, as well as the educational and welfare needs of neophyte
nurses.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: June 04, 2012
Accepted:
April 20,
2012
Received in revised form:
March 2,
2012
Received:
October 17,
2011
Identification
Copyright
© 2012 Australian College of Nursing Ltd. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
