Effective Medication Communication

Communication is all around us. It’s the way we interact with each other in everyday living. Our senses have a lot to do with the way we receive communication, and even if a sense is impaired there are still ways to get the idea across to people.

Goal three by the National Patient Safety Goal for 2014 is to use medicines safely. Many errors occur regularly with medications which is why communication is so important with the doctors, nurses and patients. One process that Joint Commission requires in accredited HCO’s is medication reconciliation “creating the most accurate list possible off all medications a patient is taking, including drug name, dosage, frequency, and route, and comparing that list against the physician’s admission, transfer, and/or discharge orders with the goal of providing correct medications to the patients at all transition points within the hospital (Finkelman & Kenner, 2012, p. 388)”. Ensuring medication reconciliation to the patient, health providers and any new consults that are

The purpose of this paper is to bring forth awareness when it comes to patients and medication errors and further educates health care professionals on the importance of communication especially during transition of care. According to Williams and Ashrcoft (2013) “ An estimated median of 19.1 % of total opportunities for error in hospitals.” Although not all medication errors occur during transition it is the time most prevalent for these errors to occur. As per Johnson, Guirguis, and Grace (2015) “An estimated 60% of all medication errors occur during transition of care. The National Transitions of Care Coalition defines a transition of care as the movement of patients between healthcare locations, providers, or different levels of care within the same location as their conditions and care needs change, [and] frequently involves multiple persons, including the patient, the family member or other caregiver(s), nurse(s), social worker(s), case manager(s), pharmacist(s), physician(s), and other providers.”

Due to the large number of consumers being prescribed multiple medications, and the complexity of managing those medications, it is of a major safety concern that systems are in place for clinicians to reconcile patients medications to resolve any discrepancies in what the patient is using, or should be using, and newly added ones.

Medication Reconciliation is defined by the Joint Commission as the process of checking and rechecking a patient’s current medication list to the patient’s orders. Within a MedRec program, three steps must be followed to ensure patients have the correct medications at admission and discharge: Verification, Clarification, and Reconciliation (Greenwald et al., 2010; Ruggiero et al,. 2015). MedRec should not occur once, but multiple times especially when a patient moves from department to department. The more a patient moves, the more liable they are for a medication error due to poor communication. MedRec is done for the simple reason of catching those medication errors and correcting them before they can do any harm (The Joint Commission, 2006). Medication errors effect nearly 1.5 million people who enter the hospital setting in the USA. At least every patient has one medication discrepancy between admission and discharge, which leads to rehospitalizations due to hospital-setting medication errors (Institute of Medicine as cited by Wilson et al,. 2015). With nurses at the forefront of a patient’s medication regime, pressure is put on them to provide the necessary education and safety to prevent medication related rehospitalizations. Included in the causes for medication errors is miscommunication between departments taking care of the same patient (Allison et al., 2015). Many medication errors are preventable by the implementation of electronic orders. The use of electronic

There are many challenges during the process of medication reconciliation. Some patients are taking herbal supplements that they forgot to mention during the interview, some of them do not take all medications that are on their list for different reasons, and errors made during transfer of care reconciliation, are just a few examples how this problem is serious and can cause potential harm, even death in some cases.

In the Institute of Medicine (IOM) report in 2006, Preventing Medication Error, more than 1/3 of the 1.5 million adverse drug events that were recorded in the United States each year occurred in an outpatient setting. Likewise, in 2008 IOM released a report that laid emphases on the need for setting universal standards within prescribing and dispensing practices. Multiple studies reported that an increased prevalence of patient adherence to taking prescribed medications can be compromised by their inability to comprehend or understand the directions for taking the medication (Wolf et al., 2016). The inability to understand and interpret prescription drug labels were recognized as the leading cause of a large proportion of outpatient medication error and adverse events, as patients may possibly accidentally misuse a prescribed

Adverse drug events are the sixth leading cause of death in the United States and represent a significant financial burden to healthcare institutes at an estimated cost of $5.6 million per hospital per year (Meguerditchian N, Krotneva, Reidel, Huang, & Tamblyn, 2013). According to The Joint Commission (2006), medication reconciliation is the process of comparing a patient’s medication orders to all of the medications the patient has been taking. This reconciliation is done to identify and resolve medication discrepancies, which are unintended or unexplained

This journal talks about it takes failure to resolve medications across changes in care is an important cause of harm to patients. There is not a lot to known about medication discrepancies before patients are admitted to a skilled nursing facilities. To describe the prevalence of, type of medications involved in, and sources of medication discrepancies upon admission to the SNF setting. Cross-sectional study. Patients admitted to SNF for subacute care. Number of medication discrepancies upon admission to the SNF setting. Cross-sectional study. Patients admitted to SNF for subacute care. Number of medication discrepancies, defined as unexplained differences among documented medication regimens, including the hospital discharge summary, patient

In addition to telephone and clinic follow-up, medication reconciliation has been identified as critical transition of care intervention. Gunadi et

Mediation reconciliation is the process of gathering all the medications, including over the counter meds, herbal supplements, and multivitamins a patient is taking regarding their care. Within the parameters of mediation reconciliation, dosage, frequently, name,and route are the prime factors of developing a medication regimen. The goal of knowing all medications of a patient before continuing with care or being admitted to specialized settings like hospitals or clinics will avoid over-medicated adverse effects and possibly death. According to the article, Medication Reconciliation to Facilitate Transition of Care after Hospitalization states that, “ It is estimated that 20% of patients experience adverse effects during the two weeks after hospital discharge (2015). With that in mind, image ho many patients experience this disparity throughout their lives with the advised medications given at the hospital. The nurse, as well as the patient and their families should be encouraged to be more involved in their care to avoid inadvertent inconsistencies across the transition of care between admission, transfer, and discharge from and to specialized settings. Aside from preventing medication errors, we as nurses, can support the patient 's safety as the first line of defense in battles against unsanitary and explosive adverse effects that results from inadequate nursing skills.

A physician could make mistakes in prescribing, the pharmacy could send the wrong medication, but who actually gave it to the patient is accountable for the consequences. For this reason, it’s our responsibility to implement change in our practice based on the evidence in order to ensure safe patient care.

Medication Reconciliation is “the process of creating the most accurate list possible of all medications a patient is taking” (IHI, 1). This list would include name, dosage, frequency, route, possible side effects and interactions, drug-food interactions, and the importance of taking the medications exactly as

The reconciliation should be used in every transition in care, where the new medication is prescribed and old mediations are rewritten. The accuracy of the list can prevent many drug effects and interactions; therefore it is important to ensure proper documentation and communication at all levels of care. Also, many errors occur when doctors fail to write out necessary orders such as, “resume pre-op medication.” The use of this “resume pre-op medication” has been prohibited by the Joint Commission due to the many complications it can produce including increasing the chances of adverse effects. Furthermore, it has been discovered that most discharged patients have been found to have insufficient knowledge regarding their medications upon returning home (Joint Commission, 2006). Medical reconciliation provides the patient with crucial information regarding the dosage, route, therapeutic effect, and reason for administration.

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