Improving The Medication And Patient Safety

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

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.

3. Medication errors, handoff process and information quality. Chiru, Alina M; Baxter, Ryan. Business Process Management Journal 19.2, (2003): 2011-2016

There are several types of medication, each has a purpose and function needed for their administration via the different routes.

There are several legislations in place with protocols for the administration of medication which I have listed below. The main policy re admin of drugs and storing of drugs and medicines is the Control Of Substances Hazardous to Health or COSHH but along with this there are other policies in place as per the list below.

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.

There are various types of materials and equipment required to deliver medications via different routes examples of which are: patches for drug absorption i.e. in hormone replacement which can be placed in the most direct location, needles for subcutaneous injection i.e. in insulin dependant diabetes to allow the transfer of insulin into the body. Percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy feed tubes for people with issues swallowing or with sever reflux to allow liquid food and medications to be administered whilst bypassing the throat and gullet.

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,

Improve the safety of using medications. The findings were that often medication error were made because medications and other solutions were removed from their original

Introduction: Since 2001, compounded drugs have caused more than 1,000 illnesses, and 87 deaths in the United States (cite 1). All of these unfortunate incidents were caused by errors during the manufacturing of compounded drugs, and in most cases, because of contamination. On the 25th of September 2013, the Drug Quality and Security Act, also known as H.R. 3204, was introduced, and three days later, was passed by the House of Representatives. On the 18th of November, this Act cleared the Senate. On the 27th of September, 2013, President Barack Obama signed the Drug Quality and Security Act into law (cite 2).

Errors made while administering medications is one of the most common health care errors reported. It is estimated that 7,000 hospitals deaths yearly are attributed to medication administration errors.

Safe medication practices are key to every nurse since it results to safe medication administration. When medication is not administered correctly it results to adverse drug event which refers to harm to the patient that includes mental harm, physical harm, or loss of function which is as a result of a medication error (practices, 2017). Medication errors occur when a mistake is committed by a person administering medication and in order to avoid these errors safe medication practices need to be adhered to. Some of these

The Action Plan for Medication Safety was a study that accessed patient’s knowledge on their medications. Patients taking more then 5 medications were chosen to participate. The study began by giving each patient a fake medication plan to test if they understood the plan or not. After being accessed and properly educated, the patients were then given their own plan and a filled pillbox to handle and properly take their medications. The study concluded that the patients were more adherent to their medications because they understood the medication plan and the importance of taking their medication at the appropriate time

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