Medication Administration Errors Essay

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

Nurses are responsible for multiple patients on any given day making medication errors a potential problem in the nursing field. Medication administration not only encompasses passing medication to the patients yet begins with the physician prescribing the medication, pharmacy filling the correct prescription and ending with the nurse administering and monitoring the patient for any adverse effect from the medication. According to the National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention (NCCMERP), ‘A medication error refers to any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is in the control of the healthcare professional,

There were even times when the nurse asked us some of the medications and what they do, which we gladly answered. The nurse was very open-minded, and contributed to the conversation really well, without overshadowing the pharmacists. After discussing, we briefly split the questions that we wanted to ask among the three of us. Up until this point, I believed that our team would do well since we prepared ourselves. However, to our surprise, we were not prepared when the patient continuously complained about feeling dizzy, and not being able to breathe. All three of us were not knowledgeable enough to help the patient with his symptoms that he kept complaining about. At first, we attempted to adjust the bed, however, that did not help and made it worse. Not knowing what to do, we tried to persuade the patient to try to focus on the questions that we were about to ask in order to help with his symptoms. When the patient complied, the nurse started asking very general questions about his health and lifestyle. It was a great start until the nurse started asking questions that we were going to ask the patient. In the end, she asked all the questions that we planned to

The intended use of medications is meant to improve a person’ health, it is very important the individual administering medication or self-medicating use the drugs correctly, by following the doctors’ instruction for the medication prescribed. Medication is given to diagnose, treat, and prevent illness. Medication can be very dangerous, which can potentially cause harm or even deaf if it’s not used properly.

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.

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.

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.

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

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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.

The issues addressed are Findings 1 and 3: Finding 1 is patient medication errors are up and there is a perception of shady hiring practices and playing favorites. All employees are responsible for compliance. Policies and professional standards exist for the medical profession. The challenges will be reintroducing employees to Federal and state law that govern the profession. For hiring practices and playing favorites the challenges faced are the lack of compliance reporting structure or training for understanding compliance. There is a perception that work rules are not being enforced. Finding 3 is high job turnover and low employee morale. The challenges faced will be building communication strategies, building confidence in leadership,

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 (

The problem that the community is experiencing related to medication administration is that there is no system that can be used to check the medication before administering except the RNs and LPNs themselves. Staff members are using picture of patients in the system as a way to identify patients before administering medications. They do not have barcode reader to alert them when they are about to administer wrong medications. The community is aware of this problem and started to use the same process except that the medication is checked by three nurses instead of two after entering the information into the system.

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

Medication Errors Caused By Interrupting Administration4As for environmental interruptions, an overview of what is causing the distractionwithin the workplace needs to be determined first. A solution to a noisy room may be the use of floor or ceiling materials or even wall covers to muffle sounds (Mahmood,Chaudhury, Valente. 2011, p. 229).Personal fearI personally fear I will give the patient too much medication and create an even more critical situation for myself as a nurse than I had before. In clinical, I take my time with the process of passing medications and review with the nurse prior to going into the patient's room. I always make sure to go through the six patient rights verbally, as well with my nurse, to make sure we are on the