A survey of electronic medication management technologies among nurse educators: Implications for practice

Abstract

Supervised clinical training is an essential component of nursing education programs. There has been little written about the impact of transitioning from the pre-digital healthcare environment to electronic medication management on the clinical education of nursing students. Even less is known about how nursing faculty and students incorporate technologies such a bar code medication administration into workflow to ensure correct medication administration. This article reports the results of a national descriptive cross-sectional survey of Associate and Bachelor of Science Nursing programs. Findings from this study confirm that despite the benefits of safety technologies, current practices in many clinical agencies create new challenges for nurse educators who supervise nursing students, potentially resulting in medication errors and false documentation. Nursing students in a clinical setting need to administer medications to become proficient and safe, and access to these technologies is essential. To ensure patient safety standards and legal compliance, clinical training site agencies need policies to define acceptable workflows while providing students with the practical experience needed to achieve skill competence.