Medical Terminology

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

Spelling is important in medical terminology because many things can go wrong. You could give the wrong diagnose are even cause a patient to take the wrong medication. Many doctors and nurses use abbreviations on their charts so they won't waste as much time. Many words may sound the same but have different meaning and some words have the same meaning for example stool and evacuation. That's why it is very important for anyone joining the medical field to learn as much Medical Terminology as they possible can. I think that Medial Terminology can affect the professional because one big mistake could cause them to loose their job. And it could also affect the patient because their life is on the line. One way to avoid medical errors in future

3. Unacceptable Abbreviations: Goal 100%. • • • Despite the significant reduction in using unacceptable abbreviation, it still exists in some departments and by specific physicians. Our institution compliance was 99.6%. This is significant because of the number of orders analyzed, suggesting despite the better % that it still a huge number of orders or unacceptable

The hospital as an entity has made available to staff the list of prohibited abbreviations by having a written document to demonstrate to staff what is acceptable and what is not acceptable to use. However, it appears that some staff are still using some unacceptable abbreviations as shown in the NPSG 2 chart at 99.6%. Continuous use of unacceptable abbreviations means that the hospital will continue to see more errors as these abbreviations would be misread/misinterpreted therefore wrong medications or wrong treatments would be provided to patients.

• The accumulation of blood within the cranium, due either to head trauma or flaws in the cerebral vasculature

The use of abbreviations shortens length of many words thus really help healthcare professionals in saving time spent in writing notes. Abbreviations however do not always provide positive contributions due to misconceptions, misunderstandings, and misinterpretations leading to commitment of errors in the practice. Similarities in abbreviations for instance could root to a grave mistake. For instance the q.d. which an inscriber would like to indicate as every day could be erroneously interpreted as q.i.d. which means four times a day. Such error could result to over dosage when a certain medication is taken four times in a day instead of just once. Though some abbreviations can be easily

Why medical abbreviations should not be use in the medical field? Abbreviations can be used to save time, space, and have become be available everywhere in prescriptions and medical records. It help save times and space on the paper while writing on document such as prescription or medical record, but it have also causes misinterpreted and involvement in harmful medication errors. Therefore medical abbreviation should not be use when you are trying to communicate with medical information. Giving the wrong prescription to a patients can be harmful and sometimes life threatening. Another reason why medical abbreviation should not be use to communicate is there are frequency a confusion and you can also put your medical practice at risk.

American Psychological Association (APA) states word choice: Make certain that every word means exactly what you intend it mean (2010). Clarity requires written documents to have organization that allows readers to place the information in context (Grand Canyon University (GCU), 2013).

Medical terminology has a long and rich history that evolved in great measure from the Latin and Greek languages. “It is estimated that about three-fourths of our medical terminology is of Greek origin.”(Banay) “Latin accounts for the majority of root words in the English language.” (Fallon).

Poor record-keeping can have serious implications for the patient and the nurse. Professionally, colleagues rely on the information recorded on a patient to maintain continuity of care (Wood 2003). The patient’s progress could rapidly deteriorate due to poor record-keeping, holding the nurse responsible and accountable for the patient’s decline in condition. Poor record-keeping in this instance could include a nurse not documenting a nursing intervention such as administration of a medication. If this is not recorded another nurse could easily believe the patient did not get the medication and administer it again, causing overdose and possibly have severe implications for the patient depending on the medication. Another example could be if the nurse noticed the patient’s condition worsening but did not document it. Consequently the patient may get significantly worse before it is detected by the next nurse on duty. In these instances the nurse responsible for the poor record-keeping will most likely be brought to the Fitness to Practice Inquiry and as a result may lose his/her registration as a practicing nurse. If the nurse has made a grievous error a patient or family member could take civil action.

In my paper I will be discussing what medical terminology is, where it came from, and how it is applied to medical assistant careers as well as how it is applied to medical administration careers. I will give examples of the importance of medical terminology and specific examples of where medical careers use medical terminology on a day to day basis. I will also give a brief summary and definition of what medical terminology stands for. After reading my paper you should have a good concept of medical terminology’s importance, use, and why medical terminology is not just applied to medical assisting jobs but also why it is important for medical administration employees to also be familiar and have a good grasp on medical terminology.

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.

A medical setting in which a patient feels safe and secure is more likely to create the conditions in which optimal outcomes can be achieved. Part of helping to ensure a patient feels secure is addressing the communication barriers between the provider and the patient. Some of these barriers arise from the use of professional jargon. Surgeons, Physicians, Nurses, etc. work at a fast pace to make sure that every patient is attended to. As this is their profession, medical jargon is used frequently when communicating to each other, figuring out a diagnosis, and coming up with a treatment plan for the patient. But this medical jargon creates a barrier between the healthcare professional and the patient. There can be misunderstandings between the patient and the professional when it comes to diagnoses and treatment plans due to the communication barrier. The professionals commonly use medical terminology to inform the patient of their status and a patient may simply nod their head to be polite. This nod does not necessarily mean that there is a mutual understanding, it could potentially mean that they are overwhelmed and don’t know how else to act in response to long confusing words being directed at them. This is dangerous because a patient could leave the facility not knowing how to appropriately take care of themselves after their procedure/diagnosis. Medical jargon has the potential to cause the patient and medical professional relationship to be both broken and

Disclosing medical errors is considered necessary by patients and practitioners. They are advised to disclose in the form of an apology when necessary and appropriate. When a medical error causes damage to the patient, it seen as not acceptable because a patient goes for treatment in order to get better not to get worse therefore it calls for the situation to be addressed. When a medical error is not disclosed, the fellow peers who have witnessed the error must decide whether they should remain silent and keep the error to themselves or reveal the error to the higher up, although it would be in good faith to report the medical error to a higher up, unless it has caused harm or long-term damage to the patient. (Youngson. p. 69) There are many hospitals that the practitioners keep the errors made to themselves and do not disclose the medical errors to the families of patients or the patients themselves. Medical errors become a topic of conversation if the family of a patient or the patient themselves become aware about the error. Medical errors are something that should be disclosed in a good faith manner

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