Adherence to medication administration guidelines among nurses in a mission hospital in Meru, Kenya

Abstract

Errors in medication administration are the most prevailing in medicine and can cause harm to the patient, morbidity and mortality as a result of negligence and failure to adhere to guidelines. A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out among 117 nurses working at a mission hospital in Meru. A sample of 106 nurses was chosen using stratified and simple random sampling methods. Data was collected using a self-administered questionnaire and an observational checklist formulated from the Nursing Council of Kenya (NCK) manual of clinical procedures were used to collect data. Analysis was done using SPSS Version 21 software. 73.5% of the respondents adhered to hygiene measures, 65.5% adhered to medication safety guidelines while 65.9% adhered to medication record guidelines. Overall the adherence was poor with 37.6% (32) respondents had high adherence level while 62.4% (53) respondents had low adherence level. On observation the adherence level was 59.3%. An association was found between the mean of the two adherence levels (p=<0.001).