Maintaining and Enhancing Nursing Students' Pharmacology Knowledge to Improve Patient Safety

Background:Nurses play a vital role in the medication administration process and are frequently involved in adverse drug events (ADEs). One identified cause of ADEs is lack of pharmacology knowledge received during their training and/or failure to maintain this core information: the latter cause has been described as skill decay.Purpose:The purpose of this quality improvement project was to implement an online pharmacology review program to maintain and/or improve nursing students' pharmacology knowledge, thus decreasing skill decay over the school's summer break.Methods:Nursing students enrolled in a 4-year BSN program participated in a virtual pharmacology knowledge review program consisting of a pretest survey, learning modules, quizzes, and a final posttest survey.Results:Comparisons showed statistical significance in test score improvement from pretest to posttest.Conclusions:This project demonstrates that a review program can enhance nursing students' pharmacology knowledge throughout their summer break. It adds to the limited data about the need for pharmacology programs to decrease skill decay.