Difficulties experienced during preparation and administration of oral drugs

It was aimed to determine the difficulties experienced by pediatric nurses working in the wards of a university hospital during preparation and administration of drugs and to determine solution recommendations.

One hundred and eight nurses who accepted to participate in the study constituted the sample of the study. Open-ended questions were asked in order to obtain detailed information about the attitudes and views of the participants and face to face interview was used. The problems experienced during preparation and administration of drugs were collected using the data collection form prepared by the investigators. Institution approval, ethics committee approval (HEK12/193) and written informed consent from the nurses who wished to participate in the study were obtained to conduct the study. The data obtained were expressed as figures and percentages.

The most commonly reported problems in preparation of drugs included incomplete dissolution of tablets or non-homogeneous distribution in fluids (54.6%) and difficulty in breaking tablets in appropriate doses (45.3%). The most commonly reported problem experienced during administration of drugs was rejection of drugs which tasted bad by babies/children or spitting out the drug (75.9%). In our study, the nurses also mentioned the problems related with drug administration equipment. These problems included fear of injectors (25.9%), escape of the drugs into the respiratory way (15.7%) and lack of appropriate equipment for administering the drugs (7.4%).

In our study, it was found that all nurses experienced difficulty in preparing and administering drugs. The problems experienced by the nurses and solution recommendations for these problems were reported to the hospital administration.