Errors Associated With Medication Administration by a Nurse During Hospitalisation: A Prospective Observational Multicentric Study.

Nurses participated voluntarily, so the observed group may not represent all nurses. Direct observation can change behaviour, especially identification and hygiene, because nurses knew they were being watched. The study counted errors but did not measure clinical outcomes or harm to patients. It observed only non-intravenous medication rounds and excluded some administrations, such as patient refusal or isolation. Findings come from four Czech hospitals using paper medication records and free-text prescriptions, so they may not apply to hospitals with electronic closed-loop medication systems. The error classification was developed by the authors, so prevalence comparisons with other studies are imperfect.

The authors declare no conflicts of interest. Database management was supervised by a company specialising in protecting and storing sensitive data.

Do not read the 89.5% figure as evidence that most administrations caused serious harm. It counts any medication administration error, including procedural lapses, and major errors occurred in 6.9% of administrations.