Background: Existing research has focused mainly on high-risk medication errors, contributory factors and process-based interventions; less is known about nurses’ everyday safety work in paediatric intensive care.
Aim: To explore how nurses maintain high-risk medication safety in paediatric intensive care.
Study design: A descriptive qualitative study using purposive sampling, critical incident interviews and inductive content analysis at a tertiary children’s hospital in China.
Results: Ten nurses participated. Four themes were generated: anomaly recognition and proactive verification; team communication and continued follow-up after risk identification; safety checks and bedside adaptations in medication practice; and learning from near misses and adjusting future practice. Together, these practices spanned order review, preparation, administration, pump and compatibility management, monitoring and team learning.
Conclusions: Experienced nurses in paediatric intensive care maintained high-risk medication safety through linked practices of anomaly recognition, proactive verification, team communication, continued follow-up, safety checks, bedside adaptation and near-miss learning.
Relevance to clinical practice: Training and workflow support should strengthen anomaly recognition, dose and infusion-rate recalculation, communication, active double checking, compatibility checking, infusion-pump management, follow-up monitoring and near-miss learning.
Reference:Huang M, Lv M, Huang J, Lin Y. How Nurses Maintain High-Risk Medication Safety in Paediatric Intensive Care. Nurs Crit Care. 2026 Sep;31(5):e70638. doi: 10.1111/nicc.70638. PMID: 42638215; PMCID: PMC13504071.