Nurses' medication calculation skills: a systematic review study

Introduction and Objective: One of the basic professional skills of nurses is the ability to calculate medications that they must have in order to safely prescribing of medications in practice. Nurses must also be proficient in using weights, measures, and measurement systems to be able to calculate the dose of medications and prepare them for use. The aim of this review was to evaluate medication calculation skills of nurses.Method: The present study is a systematic review based on articles extracted from Iranian databases: SID, Magiran, Iranmedex and foreign: CINAHL, ProQuest, Ovid, PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct, using the keywords skill, medication calculations, nurse, educational need and other related keywords along with its English equivalent. Inclusion criteria included publication of article between ۲۰۱۲ and ۲۰۲۲, research articles related to nurses' medication calculation skills, and access to full text. In the initial review of the studies, duplicates were removed, then full text of the studies selected by the two reviewers was evaluated independently.Results: In the initial search, ۸۳۷ articles were found that ۱۳ studies were finally reviewed. Nurses' medication calculations is an international problem. It seems that nursing education has not been successful in preparing students for medication calculations and more training has been emphasized to improve nurses' medication calculation skills. In Iran, the need to pay attention to medication calculation skills in nurses due to its weakness, high error in calculations and its considerable importance has been emphasized. Paying attention to the correct use of drugs, especially drugs that play a vital role and are used in critical situations, can improve the patient's level of safety and prevent drug errors related to drug calculations, which certainly the smallest error in this area can be threaten the patient's life, play a role and lead to improving the quality of nursing services.Conclusion: The results showed that medication calculation skills in nurses should be developed and special attention should be paid to the stages of drug preparation and administration. For this purpose, evaluating and approving the competence of nurses' medication calculations and using different educational strategies can be effective.

کلیدواژه ها:

۳Skill ، Medication calculations ، Nursing ، Systematic review