A Brief Note On Bar Code Medication Administration Essay

According to a cross-sectional study involving 237 nurses, approximately 65% of the nurses have made medication error. Only 31% of the participants reported medication errors. According to the study the most common type of reported errors were wrong dosage and infusion rate. The most common causes were using abbreviations of the drugs and similar names of the drugs. However, the study did not find any relationship between medication years and years of experience, age, and working shift. Yet study found association between intravenous injection and gender (Cheragi at al

Each year, roughly 1.5 million adverse drug events (ADEs) occur in acute and long-term care settings across America (Institute of Medicine [IOM], 2006). An ADE is succinctly defined as actual or potential patient harm resulting from a medication error. To expound further, while ADEs may result from oversights related to prescribing or dispensing, 26-32% of all erroneous drug interventions occur during the nursing administration and monitoring phases (Anderson & Townsend, 2010). These mollifiable mishaps not only create a formidable financial burden for health care systems, they also carry the potential of imposing irreversible physiological impairment to patients and their families. In an effort to ameliorate cost inflation, undue detriment, and the potential for litigation, a multifactorial approach must be taken to improve patient outcomes. Key components in allaying drug-related errors from a nursing perspective include: implementing safety and quality measures, understanding the roles and responsibilities of the nurse, embracing technological safeguards, incorporating interdisciplinary collaborative efforts, and continued emphasis upon quality control.

Improved patient safety is the most essential advantage of the BCMA system. “On average a hospital patient is subjected to at least one medication error per day (IOM, 2006)”(Foote). BCMA significantly reduces medication errors that cause a compromise in patient safety. The BCMA verifies the five rights of medication administration before a patient receives a medication by the software alerting the nurse if there is a contraindication between the medicine scanned and the patient’s orders. A pilot study conducted at a 300-bed community hospital found that the BCMA system reduced medication errors by 80% (Foote). Fowler et al states that “decrease in errors related to the wrong patient was a direct result of the bar code system (Fowler).”

One of the critical core components of Skilled Nursing Facility is medication administration. As cited by Tenhunen, Tanner, and Dahlen (2014), they stated that 88% of the residents living in the nursing homes are aged 65 years old and older. They discussed that every five of administered medications in nursing home has one probability of error. This means that about half of the residents have the possibility of two or more medication errors daily. This applies to the Pasadena Care Center (PCC) because its residents are mostly older adults who require medications on a daily basis. Moreover, residents are prescribed with multiple medications, which make them vulnerable to medication errors. The staff at PCC is trying their best to ensure safe medication administration, however, it still in need of a major change. The goal of the proposed change is to decrease the medication errors in this organization to ensure patient safety.

This article will look at two articles and focus on aspects of safety medication administration in nursing practice by the staff nurses. This is interesting area because the previous report on the medication administration error in the UK shows that approximately 5.6% of doses administered to adult hospital patients and it has been estimated that 0.6-1.2% of medication administration errors may lead to severe harm even death (Mcleod et al, 2013). Leape et al (1995) indicated that nurses were responsible for 86% of all medication error interception, regardless of the original errors. The nurses play the important role in identifying the causes of medication errors and preventing medication administration errors in nursing practice in order to provide safe care toward the service users (Henneman et al, 2010). The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA 2004) documented that the health professionals need to effectively and safely use medicines to ensure patients get the maximum benefit from the medicine; meanwhile minimizing the potential harm. This article will be critiqued on the different types of evidence which explored safety medication administration in the nursing practice toward service user. Using evidence is important in nursing practice because it can help nurses in addressing questions related to best possible care and improve patients’ outcome. It is embedded within the code the nurses are expected to use best possible evidence in the nursing

Medication errors are among the most significant cause of patient injury in all types of medical errors (Johnson, Carlson, Tucker, & Willette, n.d). In the nursing profession, medication administration errors occur 34% of the time, second only to physician ordering errors (Gooder, 2011). The introduction of information technology, such as the Bar Code Medication Administration (BCMA), offers new opportunities for reducing medication administration errors. BCMA was developed by the Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center in 1998 to help improve the documentation of medication administration, decrease medication errors and provide

The following articles were reviewed for the purpose of addressing bar code scanning in medication administration. Nursing requires the critical skill of accurate medication administration. The use of electronic medication administration has brought about many changes in the healthcare field. The article,” What Determines Successful Implementation of Inpatient Information Technology Systems” (Spetz et al 2012), was reviewed to address the above question. Computerized patients records and bar-code medication systems continue to gain favor in healthcare. This idea spread across the nation in all VA sites (Spetz et al., 2012, p. 157), providing a safer environment for patient care.

While the use of barcode technology has had many applications in hospitals for quite some time it has only recently been used to address patient safety. Mitch Work (2005) views bar code technology as a particularly promising advance in the effort to reduce medical errors. Barcodes provide a valuable verification of medication administration by assuring that the "five rights" are confirmed: right patient, right medication, right dose, right time, and right route of administration. The use of barcode technology at the patient's bedside has shown notable gains in reducing medication administration errors, which may account for as many as 7,000 deaths per year in U.S. hospitals.

As a leader in the workplace, medication errors mostly occur when the workplace is understaffed with a patient load of full nursing cares that require more attention and care than patients who are independent. Due to being understaffed with a patient load of 13 to 2 nurses, medication errors occur more often as nurses are being rushed to finish all cares within their work timeframe. To decrease medication errors it is important to implement more staff during medication rounds, thus giving nurses additional time to concentrate and assure that the correct medication and dose is being given to the right patient ( ). The 6 medication rights are important to implement into every workplace as it decreases the chances of administrating medication to the wrong patients ( ). The medication right include; ______________________________________________________________ ( ). Medication errors have important implications for patient safety and in improving clinical practice errors to prevent any adverse events (

Administration of medicines is a key element of nursing care. Every day some 7000 doses of medication are administered in a typical NHS hospital (Audit Commission 2002). So throughout this essay I will be evaluating and highlighting the learning that took place whilst on placement at a day unit.

In today’s current fast-paced and demanding field of heath care, medication administration has become complex and time-consuming task. Approximately one-third of the nurses’ time is used in medication administration. There is much potential for error because of the complexity of the medication administration process. Since nurses are the last ones to actually administer the medication to the patient therefore they become responsible for medication administration errors (MAE). Reasons for MAE may include individual factors, organizational factors or system factors. This paper will discuss the root causes analysis of MAE and strategies to prevent them.

Nursing in today?s society involves more than technical skills, critical thinking, and compassion. It also is changing to add the ability to not only understand but be able to utilize technology to impact a patient?s health. There are many technological changes employed in healthcare practices, however, I have chosen to address bar-code medication administration or BCMA. According to an article in the Journal of Patient Safety, ?bar-code medication administration has been shown to be effective in reducing patient medical errors, yet is still only utilized in 5% of the country?s health care facilities? (Sands, Slebodnik, & Young, 2010). Medication errors are common in hospitals and often lead not only to patient harm, but also lengthy hospital stays and law suits. ?One study identified 6.5 adverse events related to medication use per 100 inpatient admissions, more than one fourth of these events were due to errors and were therefore preventable? (Bane, et. al., 2010).

September 2011 | Volume 18 | Number 26 5 NURSING MANAGEMENT Feature New barcode checks help reduce drug round errors in care homes The switch to an electronic medication system has improved staff awareness of near misses and reduced workplace stress. Deidre Wild and colleagues report a checking system to match medication to patients using barcodes can reduce the number of near miss drug errors in care homes, research has found. This article describes the study, which aimed to evaluate the effect of introducing a computerised method of drug administration in nursing and residential care homes.

Medication Barcode Scanning (MBS) has been considered as one of the significant ways of reducing medication error. It begins from when medication is ordered by the doctor, a pharmacist reviews the order prior to supplying the medication to the nurse who then administers the medication to the patient (Department Veterans Affairs, 2003)). Study stated that from about 450,000 drug adverse effect that occur yearly, about 25% would be avoided with the use of certain technologies like medication barcode scanning (Bates, Cullen & Laird et al, 1995). According to Seibert, Maddox, Flynn & Williams (2014), technologies like “automated dispensing cabinets, computerized prescriber order entry (CPOE), “smart” computerized I.V. infusion pumps,

Medication error is one of the biggest problems in the healthcare field. Patients are dying due to wrong drug or dosage. Medication error is any preventable incident that leads to inappropriate medication use or harms the patient while the medication is in the control of the health care professional,or patient (U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 2015). It is estimated about 44,000 inpatients die each year in the United States due to medication errors which were indeed preventable (Mahmood, Chaudhury, Gaumont & Rust, 2012). There are many factors that contribute to medication error. However, the most common that factors are human factors, right patient information, miscommunication of abbreviations, wrong dosage. Healthcare providers do not intend to make medication errors, but they happen anyways. Therefore, nursing should play a tremendous role to reduce medication error