Medication administration errors reach patients and pose a threat to patient safety, increasing mortality rates, length of hospital stay, and related costs. It also has an impact on patients, healthcare professionals, and health institutions. It is highly prevalent in Ethiopia, which ranges from 51.8% to 90.8%. Knowing the association of medication administration errors with interruption will help to provide information for health policy-makers to design and implement effective interventions to reduce its negative impact. To determine the association of medication administration errors with interruption among nurses at Amhara Region Referral Hospitals. An institution-based cross-sectional study was conducted from February to March 2019. A simple random sampling technique was employed to select 348 nurses. Structured pretested self-administered questionnaires were used to collect data. The data were entered in Epi-info version 7 and analyzed using SPSS version 20. Bivariate and multivariable logistic regressions were computed to check the association of interruption with medication administration errors. P-values < 0.05 and adjusted odds ratios were used to declare the significance and strength of the association. Nearly 76% of the study participants who were interrupted during medication administration committed medication errors. Interruption during medication administration [AOR = 4.70, 95 % CI (2.42, 9.10)] was significantly associated with medication administration errors. There was a significant association between medication administration errors and interruption among nurses.

Keywords: Interruption, Medication administration, medication administration errors, Nurse