Introduction: Improving the safety of medicines requires a systemic approach. Understanding how and why errors occur is key to reducing medication administration errors. Nurses most often give medication and are, on the one hand, the ones that cause medication administration errors, and on the other hand, they may be the most important link in the safe use of medicines. Purpose: To review the latest relevant literature to determine the most important causes of medication administration errors and the most important measures to prevent medication administration errors. Methods: A review of domestic and foreign literature in the databases COBIB.si, Google Scholar, Medline (Pubmed), CINAHL and SpringerLink was performed. Search passwords were used to search for Slovenian literature: “nurses" AND "medication administration errors", "nurses" AND "measures to prevent errors in the medication administration errors". Inclusion criteria for the literature review were electronic accessibility to full texts, publication in the period 2010–2020 and Slovene or English language. Results: 18 articles were included in the final analysis. We identified 40 codes, which were grouped into two content categories: causes of nurses’ errors in administering medications and measures in building and maintaining a safety system for the purpose of preventing errors in administering medications. Discussion and conclusion: Medication administration errors are relatively common. The causes of medication administration errors are human and systemic. Healthcare organizations need to create a nonaccusatory organizational culture so that employees can report medication errors without fear. Less explored are nurses’ attitudes toward safety practices. The link between safety practices and competencies, knowledge and attitudes of nurses is also insufficiently researched.
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