الفهرس 
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Abstract
Critically ill patients are patient who have actual or potential life-threatening health problems in need to constant intensive multidisciplinary assessment and intervention with high-tech equipment, highly advanced diagnostic and therapeutic regimen such as: medications. These medications had essential role in supporting body systems, preventing life threatening complications, and achieving and maintaining optimal responses to health problems. Medication administration is a fundamental nursing procedure for all critically ill patients.
The current study was conducted to evaluate nurses’ related medication errors in critical care units in general ICU & casualty unit in the Main university hospital.
To achieve these objectives; a descriptive research design was used to conduct the current study. This study was conducted in the critical care units of Alexandria Main University Hospital namely: the Casualty Intensive Care Unit (Unit I) and the General Intensive Care Unit (Unit III).
A convenient sample including all nurses working in the previously mentioned critical care unit (58) of Alexandria Main University Hospital was involved in this study concerned with drug administration was included. All patients assigned to the observed nurse were observed whenever receiving medications. Nurses were of either sex, their age ranged from 20-30 years, their qualifications were B.Sc, technical institute of nursing, Secondary School, and their years of experience in ICU divided into less than 5 years or more than 5 years. Patients included in the study were of either sex, their age ranged from 20-60years with multiple diagnoses.
Drug doses: minimum sample size of 282 doses (132 doses in the Casualty Unit and 150 doses in the General ICU ”unit III”) is chosen as large enough to obtain an adequate measure of an observation of medication administration for each of the two ICUs. It meant that each observation of medication to a patient was considered one observation.
The selected nurse will be observed for 3-5 times on different work shifts (i.e. 3-5 different medication doses / nurse). The data were collected over a 2 months period in each of the ICUs covering all working days and weekends.
The main results of this study revealed that, there are significant differences between medication errors and nurses’ age; there is significant difference among different age group of the nurses regarding dose and time errors. Also, the findings of the current study reveal that the differences among different age group of the nurses regarding route errors were not significant.