Examining the effect of an education intervention on nurses' medicines management knowledge.

Abstract

Background: Suboptimal medicines management due to inadequate knowledge can cause risks to patient safety and affect the quality of care and patient outcomes.

Aim: To examine the effect of an educational programme on nurses' knowledge of medicines management.

Method: A pre and post-design was used to evaluate the effectiveness of an educational medicines management programme. Data were collected from nurses before and after programme participation from September 2016 to June 2018. A total of 99 nurses received a multiple-choice questionnaire before and after the programme to assess for changes in their knowledge. Any changes in test performance following the medicines management programme were quantified and tested using McNemar's test and the generalised estimating equation for binary outcomes. The Chi-square test was used to analyse group differences.

Results: The nurses' scores were significantly improved after the medicines management programme on questions regarding documentation, observation, aseptic technique and pharmacology half-life. There was a significant improvement on one of the five questions relating to medicine calculation when converting doses from milligrams to grams.

Conclusion: A mandatory hospital medicines management programme had some effect on increasing nurses' knowledge. However, it also was also found that the programme content could have been improved, particularly regarding nurses' responsibilities for medicines management at patient discharge and documentation when undertaking generic substitution.