Adapting a Distraction and Interruption Simulation for Safe Medication Preparation: An International Collaboration

BackgroundNurse distractions and interruptions are leading causes of errors in nursing practice, with medication preparation being the most-interrupted activity.MethodsFor this reason, nursing faculty at a public research university in the Great Lakes Region of the United States developed and implemented a medication preparation simulation to help nursing students prepare for distractions and interruptions in the clinical environment.ResultsBeginning in 2019, nursing faculty from a mid-sized research-intensive university in western Canada collaborated with the original simulation developers in the United States to adapt the simulation to a Canadian context.ConclusionIn this article we describe the international collaboration to adapt and pilot the distraction and interruption simulation with Canadian nursing students, which in turn led to an international research project to discover how this simulation may enable students to develop strategies for maintaining safe medication practices in highly-interruptive clinical environments.