Intimidating Behavior Jeopardizing Medication Safety Summary

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

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.

According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA 2009), the wrong route of administrating medication accounts for 1.3 million injuries each year. An article published in September issue of the Journal of Patient Safety estimates there are between 210,000 and 400,000 deaths per year associated with medical errors. This makes medical errors the third leading cause of deaths in the United States, behind that comes heart disease and cancer. To prevent medical errors always follow the Three Checks and most importantly the Rights of Medication Administration. The “Rights of Medication Administration” helps to ensure accuracy when administering medication to a patient. When administering medication the administer should ensure they have the Right Medication, Right Patient, Right Dosage, Right Route, Right Time, Right Route, Right Reason, and Right Documentation. Also remember the patient has the right to refuse, assess patient for pain, and always assess the patient for signs of effects.

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.

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,

Breeding, et al. (2013) states that there are a number of published documents addressing the quality, safety, and explicitly medication safety within ICUs worldwide. A large proportion of these studies focused on specific interventions such as: (1) creating “No interruption zones”; (2) addressing drug incompatibilities; (3) implementing automatic drug dispensing systems or electronic prescription of medications; or (4) implementing an ICU pharmacist role (Breeding, et al., 2013, p. 59). It is essential for multidisciplinary teams to be formed for medication safety promotion within this population. These teams would include physicians, pharmacists, and nurses (to also include advanced practicing nurses [APRN], such as nurse practitioners [NPs] or clinical nurse specialists

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

As a leader in the workplace, medication errors mostly occur when the workplace is understaffed with a patient load of full nursing cares that require more attention and care than patients who are independent. Due to being understaffed with a patient load of 13 to 2 nurses, medication errors occur more often as nurses are being rushed to finish all cares within their work timeframe. To decrease medication errors it is important to implement more staff during medication rounds, thus giving nurses additional time to concentrate and assure that the correct medication and dose is being given to the right patient ( ). The 6 medication rights are important to implement into every workplace as it decreases the chances of administrating medication to the wrong patients ( ). The medication right include; ______________________________________________________________ ( ). Medication errors have important implications for patient safety and in improving clinical practice errors to prevent any adverse events (

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.

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

There are other pharmacy staff who also have roles in relation to the safe dispensing of medicines. A pharmacist is responsible for: Overall checking of a prescription to make sure that it is legal and written by a person qualified to do so, dispensing the right quantity of the correct medicine, ensuring that medicines are correctly labelled with the person’s name, the name of the medicine and the dosage, providing advice and treatment for minor illnesses, injuries and health concerns, providing a repeat prescription service in co-operation with GP

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.

Since the perception of patient safety has arisen, many medical organizations were striving to improve medication safety. Emory Healthcare, the largest and most comprehensive health care system in Georgia, was one of them who were seeking ways to prevent medication errors. In recent years, some