Nursing Students' Medication Administration: A Focus on Hand Hygiene and Patient Identification

Procedural failures during medication administration include a lack of appropriate hand hygiene and failure to verify patient identification prior to administration of medication. Procedural failures are common among nurses and nursing students and can lead to serious patient harm.

A descriptive cross-sectional research design was used to collect observational data from a simulation-based experience of a medication administration scenario.

Thirty-five senior baccalaureate nursing students from two geographically distant universities in the United States participated in the study. All of the participants made at least one procedural failure during the simulated experience. Hand hygiene compliance was 40.3%, and patient identification compliance was 43.8%.

Students often failed to comply with medication administration safety guidelines. Nursing programs must make changes to the methods used to teach safe medication administration to prepare students for this critical skill. [.