The Most Frequent Errors and Error Causes in Intravenous Medication Administration

Introduction. Intravenous medication administration is a critical component in healthcare, which is utilized for delivering medications directly into the bloodstream to achieve immediate therapeutic outcomes. It is essential to ensure that this method of medication delivery is both safe and effective. Aim. This literature review aims to identify the most frequent intravenous medication errors and their causes. Methods. Literature search was performed in March 2024 utilizing PubMed, ScienceDirect, and Scopus, covering the period from February 2018 to January 2024.Results. This literature review included 17 articles. The articles were selected to overview the most frequent intravenous medication errors, their causes, and prevention possibilities. Results have shown the most frequent types of intravenous medication errors which occur during the stages of preparation and administration: insufficient hand hygiene and not adhering to aseptic mode while preparing the medication, dose calculation errors, patient identification errors, as well as not adhering to the rules of safe medication administration.Conclusions. Intravenous administration is a common nursing intervention and it is prone to high error rates. Nurses bear a significant amount of responsibility regarding the right way of administration and preparation of intravenous medicine. According to our review, several factors are more prone to be the cause of medication administration errors, and they include the lack of nurse knowledge, attitude and behavior, lack of hand hygiene, and distractions while preparing the medication coming from other nurses and patients or telephones. The outcomes of these factors are the most common cause of the intravenous medication errors which include incorrect dose and labeling errors.