As healthcare continues to develop, so too has the technology involved. In the article, “A Controlled Trial of Smart Infusion Pumps to Improve Medication Safety in Critically Ill Patients” the authors seek to understand the impact of smart pumps, how they are used in the clinical setting and how this technology effects medication errors and adverse drug events. The thesis of this article recognizes that while the medication administration process is complex and allows many opportunities for error, the impact of advancing technology has great promise in improving the safety of infusion-based medications. The study also provides an opportunity to understand how critical care nurses are (or are not) integrating new technology into their practice. This non-blinded, prospective time series study sheds light on the fact that both the technology and the nurse’s performance were the critical factors in the current rates of intravenous infusion errors (Rothschild et al., 2005, p. 13, 20).
The findings of this study were drawn from 735 admitted cardiac surgery patients at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital between February 2002 and December 2002 (Rothschild et al., 2005, p. 14, 18). The study did this by comparing medication error rate between intervention and control periods. Additionally, physicians were used to identified event type, preventability and severity of the medication errors. The overall findings suggest that smart pumps did not reduce the rate of serious medication
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
Many of those drawback areas will fall inside the realm of nursing administration of medicines. It’s for simply these reasons that standards for medication administration were developed. The standards guarantee safe nursing observe.
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.
The nurse driven protocol was tested in 4 intensive care units. It included evidence-based orders for discontinuing, handling, and properly managing the catheters. One of the most important factors was the removal of the catheters in a timely manner. The data pre
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
A leading type of error identified in doing harm to PCA patients is the improper dosage or quantity of analgesic medication (Hicks et al, 2008). This sort of error took place on a patient returning to a hospital for postoperative pain management following a recent surgical procedure. The nurse was given an order to manage the patient’s pain with hydromorphone administered via PCA infusion pump. In programming the pump the nurse inadvertently changed the concentration of the medication from 1mg/ml to 0.3mg/ml, thus leading to errors in both the
For many patients the scariest part of being in the hospital is having to rely on other people to control your life changing decisions. One large part of this is the medications one is given while in our care. I can only imagine what it must be like for patients to have a stranger to come in and start administering drugs to me. This would be especially scary if I did not know what these medications did, or what negative effects could be caused by taking them. Unfortunately, the fear of medication errors that many patients have are not unfounded. Estimates range from 1.5 to 66 million patients a year have medication errors occur while they are in the care of health care professionals. Considering all of the technology we have at our
One of the most important steps in caring for hospitalized patients is medication administration. Patients come into the hospital to be treated so they will feel better, it does not matter what the physician does if the medications are not given to the patient they will not get better. According to McGonigle and Mastrian, the steps of administering medication have not changed in many years, they are “assessment of need, ordering, dispensing, administration, and evaluation” (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2012, p. 386). The purpose of this paper is explain the medication administration process that is used in my facility, to determine the technology used is effective.
Allison, smart pumps are a useful tool developed to improve patient outcomes by reducing medication errors however, according to the newsletter published by the Institute of Safe Medication Practices (IMSP), smart pumps are not smart on their own. The smart pump depends on an accurate medication library, and complete adoption of the smart pump technology by the nursing staff. (Institute of Safe Medication Practices (ISMP), April 19, 2007). You stopped a near medication error by following through when the smart pump denoted there was an error when you attempted to program a medication. The ISMP indicates that with any technology, safety has a maximum impact when the end user does not bypass the safety that has been implemented (ISMP, 2009).
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).
While any decrease in medication errors is welcomed, the anticipation is the decrease will be from fewer distractions for the administering nurse. Errors that occurred in the one year period prior to the study will be compared to the year that the hospital staff has been educated about the research program and the medication administering nurses are wearing the sashes. Internal communication of the findings will be disseminated to the board of trustees and administration via a technical report that will include data and analysis. A different internal report that summarizes the data and technical information will be disseminated to department heads and other staff, including nurses, nurse aides, respiratory therapy, occupational therapy, and other necessary staff. Every employee will be emailed a copy of the summary report, ensuring all employees have access to the results. In addition to verbally educating patients and their families about the findings, a tri-fold pamphlet will be created to hand to all patients. This pamphlet can also be used for educating the public in general at community or open house
This research study is about how nurses administer medications safely or how existing systems facilitate / hinder the medication administration, which has missed the opportunity for the implementation of practical, effective, and low-cost approach to optimize safety. The purpose of the study is to pinpoint factors that facilitate and/or hinder successful medication administration, which targets on three integral parts: nurse practices and workarounds, medication administration workflow, and nature of interruptions and distractions during medication administration. In effect, the findings showed three interrelated themes that facilitated successful medication administration in some situations, but also acted as barriers in others. These interrelated themes include (1) system configurations and features, (2) Behavior types among nurses, and (3) patient interactions. Some system configuration and features acted as physical pressure for parts of the drug round, however, some system effects were partly dependent on nurses ' inherent behavior, which were grouped as: 'task focus ' and 'patient-interaction focused '. The 'task focus ' is a more organized workflow with fewer interruptions, while 'patient-interaction focused ' empowers patients to act as a defense barrier against medication errors by being an active resource of information, a passive resource of information, and/or a 'double-checker '. Thus, researchers concluded that in order to reduce
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
Every day there is a constant trust adhered to many different people in the profession of Nursing—the decision of what will help patients in terms of medicine, and the confidence to make these decisions. One false act or one slight misdiagnoses of medication to a patient could be the prime factor in whether the patient lives or dies. Nurses in hospitals across the country are spread thin, and thus makes the probability of mistakes higher. If a medicinal dose is off by even one decimal a patient could die, so the only real answer is for nurses to not be afraid to ask for assistance, always follow procedure and voice opinion is they feel something is wrong.