Commentary on Manias E, Aitken R & Dunning T (2005) How graduate nurses use protocols to manage patients' medications. Journal of Clinical Nursing 14, 935-944.

摘要

The effective management of patients' medications is instrumental to patient welfare. Medication administration procedures should be clear and one way of achieving clarity and a systematic approach is through the use of protocols. Whilst the UK Department of Health (2004) make reference to the need for clear drug administration procedures in their most recent major report on medication safety, they make no associated reference to protocol use or its effectiveness. The eloquent paper by Manias et al. (2005) is based on a small but carefully conducted, mixed method study into this important topic. Studies such as this have relevance beyond nursing and raise implications for all those interested in patient safety. My current research is concerned with the contributory factors in medication errors and the reporting of such errors; consequently this commentary is somewhat influenced by my research interest. Coincidentally, the emergent themes from my qualitative interviews with a multi-professional sample of doctors, nurses and pharmacists, suggest the broad utility of clinical protocols is open to some questions.