Assessing the factors affecting the level of competence in medication administration : Its implication to the occurrence of medication error

The study investigated the factors affecting level of competence of nursing students in medication administration. Factors were assessed in terms of the internal and external factors. Internal factors include the student’s personal factors, the feelings and attitudes , their skills in medication administration and knowledge on the concepts related to medication administration. On the other hand external factors includes the manner they are being supervised by their clinical instructors, staff nurses in the clinical area where they had been assigned , the number of related learning experience hours , and lastly patient ratios or the number of patients assigned to them . Study results revealed that majority of the nursing students were confident in administering medications and that they possessed the competence in performing such procedure. In terms of the internal and external factors affecting the level of competence, it revealed that knowledge on the concept in medication administration is more likely to affect the competence of the students. On the other hand, in terms of the external factor, the supervision of the clinical instructors greatly influence the nursing students to a high level in performing such procedure.