Report on Medication Safety

Research Title: Medication Safety is an integral part of nursing and midwifery practice

1.      Introduction of Medication Safety

In the healthcare sector, patient safety is the primary responsibility of medical staff and nurses. Healthcare services providers are supposed to consider the specific differences and personal medical history of the patients while providing the treatment. However, sometimes because of a mistake or error nurses fails to meet these specifications which result in the critical and adverse events at hospitals. This research project is focused on medication safety at healthcare centers and hospitals. The main objective of this research project is to identify the possible opportunities for the improvement of healthcare services by reducing the error rate in the medication process by nurses and midwifery practices. The research will collect primary and secondary data while relying on a qualitative research design.

2.      Research Design and its relevance of Medication Safety

The selected research design for this project is “qualitative research design”. The selected research design is appropriate for this project as it has relevance to the research issue. The key goal of this project is the medication safety process improvement. To collect authentic information about this topic we need to collect information from the field-specific qualified and expert people. Therefore, the interview (a technique of qualitative research design) is the most suitable option. Further in the research design, it is selected that the research needs a lot of data and information to conduct the research. The data is collected by performing two methodologies such as conducting the interviews as well as from journal articles. Moreover, the research data can only be collected from the journals and magazines but it is also needed to collect the real data of the patients, nurses and other hospital staff, so the interviews are very important to collect information and effectively conduct the research. But a problem is to conduct interviews is that the data cannot be collected without having any participant for the interview. So, it is needed to select the participants. After selecting the participants, the interviews are conducted and a lot of information related to patient security is collected. The rationale for the selection of the participants is discussed in the next section.

3.      The rationale for Selection of Participants of Medication Safety

The research relates to all nurses and medical staff in hospitals over the world. However, considering the limitation of resources “samples” will be selected as representatives of the whole research population for this research project. The selected research population is in-service nurses at local hospitals. While only 30 representatives will be selected as research samples. The rationale behind selecting nurses as research samples are that nurses are experienced and familiar with common challenges that can influence medication safety goals. Therefore, collecting data from nurses would be helpful to identify actual causes and suggest mitigation options (Levy & Lemeshow, 2013).

4.      Sampling Strategies of Medication Safety

All research data and information will be obtained from the selected research samples. The samples will be selected for this research project based on the random sampling strategy. All members of the selected population will have the same probability of selection when they will be divided into sperate groups known as clusters (hospitals). Then research representatives will be selected randomly for interviews. The rationale behind this sampling strategy is its relevance to the research project. The random sampling strategy is most suitable for this research project as it eliminates the chances of personal biases and discrimination in the selection of respondents (Sears, Goldsworthy, & Goodman, 2010).  

5.      Data Collection Method of Medication Safety

Two methods (primary and secondary data collection methods) will be selected for data collection in the research project. The primary data collection method will use an interview technique to collect qualitative research data from the research samples "nurses" in the local hospitals. However, the secondary data collection method is to review literature superficially research articles published on a similar problem (medication safety in hospitals). For secondary data collection, only recent and most relevant research articles will be used. In the data collection method, the researchers have used two different kinds of methods for primary and secondary data collection. The researcher has selected the participants for conducting interviews to collect the relevant and information that can be a hundred percent relevant related to the research questions. In the other method, the researchers have used journals or academic articles. No, doubt the second method has taken time but it is very appropriate because it is providing exact data and the previous related studies.

6.      Selection of Data Analysis Method of Medication Safety

The collected primary and secondary data will be analyzed by the use of software and other relevant strategies. For primary data analysis will be made while focusing on the research questions to find an answer to the pre-developed research questions. However, a table will be prepared to represent the findings of secondary data obtained from the literature review. While to represent analyzed data about medication process researchers will use graphs, charts, and tables. By taking the look on the data, it is very difficult to understand what type of data will be selected to perform analysis because a larger amount of data is presently related to the hospitals, staff members as well as related to patients. It is highly needed to select the appropriate data as well as relevant information for the analysis. So, the researcher of this study will use the research questions that will provide the information about about what type of information or data will collect. Furthermore, The literature reviews or journal articles are also reviewed for the selection of data because they provide relevant information about data to be analyzed. Furthermore, the research questions are analyzed which are providing the relevant information about the selection of data as well as for more relevancy of the data selected for analysis, the research will review the tables presenting the data related to the research questions, graphs as well as some relevant charts.

7.      Database Search of Medication Safety

After collecting the secondary and the primary data through conducting interviews and reading the articles, a lot of data related to the patient’s safety. The collected data was analyzed and then that data would be needed to save in a secure place where the researchers can easily access that data and can use this data for further researches. So, the database related to patient safety is produced and maintained. The database has a large number of data set that was collected from different journals, magazines as well as conducting direct interviews. Furthermore, all data that is collected from different sources, is organized which can be easily understood.

References of Medication Safety

Levy, P. S., & Lemeshow, S. (2013). A sampling of Populations: Methods and Applications. John Wiley & Sons.

Sears, K., Goldsworthy, S., & Goodman, W. M. (2010). The Relationship Between Simulation in Nursing Education and Medication Safety. Journal of Nursing Education, 49(1), 52-55.