Content analysis of nurses' reflections on medication errors in a regional hospital.

Background: Medication errors [MEs] continue to be an area of concern both nationally and internationally.

Methods: Sixty-eight reflective summaries detailing reasons for medication errors completed by nurses at an Australian regional teaching hospital during a five-year period were analysed.

Results: Fifteen codes emerged from the data that aligned to three main categories of the Human Factors Framework. They were: Individual characteristics such as inexperience, stress and lack of knowledge (5 codes), Nature of the work such as prescription errors, time pressure, miscommunication, poor handover and documentation errors (9 codes) and Physical environment such as distractions (1 code). Individual characteristics were the most frequently reported (51.6%) reasons for the error.

Conclusions: Provision of medicine information resources and management of nurses' workload as well as enhancing graduate nurse education with simulation of 'real life' clinical settings appear to be the main targets for intervention.