Failure Of Nursing Medication Errors

An error is one of the vital parts of human life. Hospitals are areas with very chaotic systems and as health care is growing more steadily, it is becoming complex in nature and more sophisticated technologically. Therefore, medical errors are bound to happen. Administrators, physicians, and nurses, are advocates of patient safety and safety is one of the highest priorities during the provision of care. A report from Institute of Medicine (IOM) claims that between 44,000 and 98,000 die annually due to medical errors (Alexander, Cheryl Ann 2014). Medication errors can lead to adverse outcomes such as increased mortality, extended period of hospitalization, and amplified medical expenses. Although the health care team can cause medication errors, nursing medication errors are the most common. Moreover the workload of the nurses combined with more prescription

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.

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

There are many factors that contribute to medication errors resulting in consequences to both patient and nurse. Factors that can contribute to errors include illegible handwritten drug orders, confusing drug names, and the use of nonstandard or unclear abbreviations (Neal, 2006). For the patient, the effect of drug errors can range from no side effects to death. For the nurse who commits a medication error the consequences can range from additional training and supervision to lawsuits and revocation of licensure. Medication errors can occur at any stage in the process of delivering medications to patients, from the originating prescriber to the pharmacy, but the majority of medication errors occur during administration.

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.

There are many different variables that go into a scenario of a medication error. Nurses carry a huge role with ensuring patient safety during a medication administration. According to Härkänen, Ahonen, Kervinen, Turunen and Vehviläinen-Julkunen (2015), the study that was performed on a medical surgical floor yielded information that allows administration to examine plausible reason behind the medical errors. The area within nursing that need to have an improvement is reducing patient medical errors due to patient to nurse ratio in combination with reducing distraction and acuity. The study that performed by Härkänen et al. (2015), observed that patients had medications of upwards to 20 regular medications, and giving them 3 times minimally. Nurses encounter many types of distractions during the times that they are administering medication. The first issue with this is that the patient has high acuity

To determine the level of competency of nurses during medication administration facilities should provide competency exams to nurses that focus on medications administration procedures. Competency and education of medication administration in nurses should be assessed during orientation and on a yearly basis. Medication administration is one of the most common duties nurses have in hospitals. According to the New Zealand Medical Journal, most of the injuries and adverse reactions that result from the wrong medications or doses given could have been prevented through safer medication practices and education (p 63). The Institute for

After evaluating the incident, I found that the negative aspect of the incident was that after administering the wrong dose of insulin the patient was at a major risk and that the duty of care was not performed well. The positive aspects of this incident were that I learnt the importance of checking the medication chart thoroughly and paying more attention to the numbers and units in the chart. It is also safe to administer medication using the five rights of medication administration, such as the right patient, the right medication, the right dose, the right time and the right route (Medication Handling in NSW Public Health facilities, 2013). (Cheragi, Manoocheri & Eshani, 2013) have stated that medication errors tend to occur from nurses due to, tiredness, carelessness, high workload, stress and poor communication and as well as having a poor knowledge and

In regards to the survey information the hospitals gathered, many of the hospitals shared the same strengths and weaknesses, with a few notable exceptions. Areas that were consistently low throughout all the hospitals were cleanliness of the hospital as well as noise level, an aspect which pharmacists do not have control over. An area in which they do have control over is if a patient’s medications are explained to them, which was a weakness of a majority of the hospitals. An area where the hospitals showed a collective strength was communication with doctors and nurses. A synergistic relationship between nurses, doctors and pharmacists will change this weakness of medication education to a strength.

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.

Mion and Sandhu (2016) stated “at the individual level, nurses must practice safe medication administration behaviors prior to every administration of every medication: compare the medication to the medical administration record, label the medication throughout the process, check two forms of patient identification, immediate documentation, and explain to patient” (p. 154). By following the 7 rights of medication administration, nurses can reduce the number medication errors. Nurses are held accountable for the medication that they are administering and must “continually

Medication errors have always been a problem; even today they still loom about health care facilities such as hospitals and assisted living homes. A medication error is as an error in the process of providing care for a patient that has potential to harm the patient. There also many different ways those medication errors can occur, prescription, preparation, distribution, transcription, administration and monitoring. “It has been estimated by the Institute of Medicine that medication errors cause 1 of 131 outpatient and 1 of 854 inpatient deaths,” (Wittich et al, 2013). Of those different ways medication errors can happen, all of them have multiple factors that go into them that can cause an error to occur. Medication errors cause many

Objective: A high percentage of medication errors are happening that involves the nursing staff. In this study, I examined some potential reason why medication errors occur due to lack of education, competency skills, feeling rushed, giving too much drugs, and drugs with similar names. I sought to determine whether nurses are being properly educate or are just not satisfied enough with their work

The evidenced based problem that was identified for this research assignment, was that nurses were causing multiple medication errors in a clinical and practice setting. According to the authors Wolf, Hicks, and Serembus (2006), a medication error is defined as any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is in the control of the health care professional, patient, or consumer. It is very important for experienced nurses and nursing professors to identify medication errors to prevent them from harming the patient. Some of the errors that were identified were not reported because registered nurses didn’t want their peers to

One of the greatest fears of any nurse is harming or killing a patient by making a critical medication error. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration reports that a person dies accidently every day from a medication error and approximately 1.3 million sustain an injury from medication errors (U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 2016). Medication errors can result from the initial prescribing of the order, transcribing the order, entering the order, dispensing the medication, repackaging the medication with improper labeling, administering the medication incorrectly,