Lap Fung Tsang^*

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United Christian Hospital, Kwun Tong, Hong Kong, China.
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Abstract: Many medication errors could be avoided if administration was more closely linked with structured monitoring. The contributory factors to administration errors occurred in one recent year were reviewed and identified contributory factors to errors as six domains of administration principles according to the report from the Quality and Safety website. The current measures including guidelines, policy, and practices to prevent the administration errors identified in the previous step were searched from the United Christian Hospital (UCH) homepage. Meanwhile, the international measures suggested in literature were identified to address the administration errors identified. 41 cases were identified as medication errors related to administration error events, with total twenty contributory factors identified according to the incident report which identified five contributory factors as common causes. Measures to prevent interruption of medication round and measures to improve individual knowledge and skills, and personal responsebility were suggested to fill the gaps. The medication administration errors should be avoided through both education reinforcing programme and preventive interventions of distraction or interruption to the procedure after comparing the existing measures to the suggested measures from literature. This study was so important to improve the current measures to prevent medication administration errors.

Keywords: Medication Administration Errors; Contributory Factors; Preventive Measures; Gap Review

Cite this paper: Tsang, L. (2013) Identify gaps between local and international measures to avoid administration error on 1-year review in United Christian Hospital, Hong Kong. Open Journal of Nursing, 3, 13-20. doi: 10.4236/ojn.2013.38A003.

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