Aspects Of Safety Medication Administration

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

Nurses offer meds. It’s one in all the foremost routine, daily duties for nurses operating in a very direct care setting. It typically a tedious job, and may take hours from begin to complete. And once you finish, it’s time to start another round.

Medication administration is a very imperative aspect in the field of nursing. The patients’ five medication rights: right patient, right drug, right dose, right route and right time is a very crucial part of nursing that has to be followed in order to lessening the possibilities of medication errors. Medication distributions among patients coincide with implementing the nursing process: assessment, diagnosis, planning outcome and intervention, implementation and evaluation. The nursing process aids nurses to carefully provide the appropriate patient care when it comes to medication management. Many times even with the proper nursing care and techniques nurses encounter interruptions when preparing and administering medications. In a research article, a tertiary care university teaching hospital conducted an observational study where it was established how often nurses were involved in interruptions

As it is mentioned earlier, medication administration includes various steps and an interdisciplinary team. Undoubtedly, nurses play a vital role in the medication administration process. Since patient safety is the priority to all health care professionals, it is important for the nurses to effectively communicate and collaborate with an interdisciplinary team if he or she is unsure about any medication prescription to prevent any adverse events. In addition, patient education is another component of safe administration. A patient must be educated on medications they are taking, the reason for taking them, the dosage, a route, potential side effects, and interactions. Nurses should perform “six rights” of the medication each time. Before administering

Outcome measures assess whether the interventions to improve medication safety practice will be successful. During the interview of the new employee, competency evaluation related to medication administration will be applied first. In addition, during the orientation for these new employees, adequate training will be provided to ensure the importance of preventing medication errors. They will be given a list of similar and look-alike medications and will focus on medications that cause the most adverse reactions when errors may occur. Then, after training and when staff start working, they will be supervised during their first few months. When they are not supervised, they will be assessed and evaluated for any errors. During this process,

As clinical site co-ordinator with many years of clinical experience I feel competent in the drug administration via a variety of routes. Generally the patients I attend have become acutely unwell with most prescriptions not having the third eye of a pharmacist and most drugs being delivered intravenously. It is imperative therefore that the prescription and drugs always be thoroughly checked which relies on good communication throughout. Furthermore, most emergency drugs have a protocol for administration developed by the hospital. However within this situation the nurse is generally the last defence before any medication error actually occurs, therefore it is the nurses responsibility to ensure the prescription is correct and to challenge prescription written

One of the standards that has been implemented is Standard 4: Medication Safety. The Australian Commission implemented this standard with the intention of ensuring that competent clinicians safely prescribe, dispense and administer appropriate medicines to informed patients and monitor the effect. (Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, 2012) In healthcare, one of the most common treatments is medication. As a result of this, there are many incidences of error, many more than any other healthcare interventions. According to the Patient Safety Network (PS Network, 2015) medication errors account for nearly 700,000 emergency department visits and 100,000 hospitalizations each year. Medication errors are often a result of the unsafe and poor quality practice of healthcare professionals or system errors. Medication errors are costly and many are avoidable. For this standard

* Compare and contrast safe medication administration for a very young and very old patient.

It is the nurse’s and pharmacist’s job to be cautious and aware of every medication they are administering by using their critical thinking skills and applying what they know to every situation. Although it is important for these individuals to be able to advocate for their patients, it also imperative that prescribers be aware of the impact they have on their patients as their actions have a domino effect. In conclusion, it is not the responsibility of a single profession to maintain safety in medication administration. It is the responsibility of everyone involved in the patient’s care. Each person who takes steps to improve the process and promote the patient as the number one priority is doing their part in refining how the healthcare system views medication

In healthcare today, when hospitals are judged upon patient safety standards, it is critical to prevent errors involving medication administration. Distractions while preparing and administering medications, has been report as one of the leading causes of medication errors. Distractions while nurses are administering medications can lead to poor patient outcomes and even sentinel events. Nurses and nurse managers are responsible for maintaining a unit with minimal distractions. When distractions are minimized throughout medication administration process, a decrease in medication errors will occur and lead to increased patient outcomes.

Medication errors are one of the leading causes within a patient care setting thatcan jeopardize the client’s safety, and can even potentially be fatal. The six patient rights,right dose, time, route, medication, patient and documentation, all help prevent errors andpromote patient safety. The nurse needs to check off each patient right in order tosuccessfully pass medications. One of the leading causes for missing one of these patientrights is interruptions in the process of medication administration prep, or when activelygiving the medication to the patient. This paper will discuss why interruptions duringmedication administration can cause errors, and interventions the nurse can do to avoidputting the patient in

Older adults are at high risk for adverse effects of medication error more than their counteract younger adults. This is because they depend on more than one medication in order to treat or prevent disease, syndromes and sickness (Lindenberg, 2010). It is inevitable that the elderly face adverse effects of drugs while on medication especially when they still live independently. However, chances of errors in hospitals and care homes are more frequent when the medication process connects several departments (Belen et. al., 2009). Therefore, tactical measures are required in the provision of drug therapy in order to optimize safe medication in older adults. This paper discusses the issue by analyzing the existing structure of administering medication, reviewing the occurrence of medication errors; evaluating systems developed to advance safe medication administration. Finally, addressing the implication for professional nursing practice.

In 1966, a Spanish couple welcomed a new baby to the world in a Denver hospital. Because the couple only spoke Spanish, communication between the couple and the healthcare staff was impaired. The mother had a history of syphilis, and it was difficult for the hospital to understand how the mother had been treated for this disease. After discussion between employees, a decision was made to treat their newborn for congenital syphilis and an order was written for Benzathine penicillin G 150,000U IM. The hospital pharmacist read the order incorrectly, mistaking the “U” for a zero making the order 1,500,000 units. The nurse caring for the baby expressed concern about injecting a high amount intramuscularly as the label on the bag instructed. Further discussion took place between staff, and a decision was made to administer the medication intravenously (IV) instead. The IV administration resulted in the death of the infant died. An autopsy later revealed that the baby did not have congenital syphilis, and therefore no treatment was truly needed (Aspden, 2007, p.43-44). Medication errors can be deadly as the previous example shows. A medication error is defined as, “any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while

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.

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