Medication Errors Essay

The most important and complex system factor is medical administration. It includes multiple process in corporates prescribing, interpreting, apportioning, and overseeing medications and checking patient reaction (Anderson, 2010

Medication errors are preventable and cause great harm to the patients and their families. Every year in Australian hospitals, medication errors occur as nurses do not follow the 9 rights of medication administration. The 9 rights are right patient, drug, route, time, documentation, response, action and form (Fossum et al., 2016). Medication errors can be caused by

Medication errors are the leading cause of morbidity and preventable death in hospitals (Adams). In fact, approximately 1.5 million Americans are injured each year as a result of medication errors in hospitals (Foote). Not only are medication errors harmful to patients but medication errors are very expensive for hospitals. Medication errors cost America’s health care system 3.5 billion dollars per year (Foote).Errors in medication administration occurs when one of the five rights of medication administration is omitted. The five rights are: a) the right dose, b) the right medication, c) the right patient, d) the right route of administration, and e) the right time of delivery (Adams). Medication administration is an essential part of

Medication errors are focused on: terms and definitions; incidence of and harm; risk factors; avoidance; disclosure, legalities & consequences (Wittich, Burkle & Lanier, 2014). Medication errors categories have been developed by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP). Examples of these categories are based on prescribing, omitting drugs not administered, timing, unauthorized drug, wrong dosage, wrong preparation, expired drug, not using laboratory data to monitor toxicity (Wittich, Burkle & Lanier, 2014). Additionally, this article examines in depth common causes leading to medication errors, drug nomenclature, similar sounding drugs, unapproved abbreviations and handwriting, medical staff shortages and manufacturer medication shortages. Even though this article provides an informative overview for physicians, other allied health personnel may benefit too. This is valuable knowledge for the health care professional not just physicians in order to provide safe care for their

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

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.

Many medication errors occur as a result of lack of adequate knowledge and skills in medication error. Nurses play a vital role in safe medication administration. Nurses should have adequate skill and knowledge to prevent medication error. Yearly competence test in medication administration and periodic education and training is vital to improve the knowledge and skills. Prescription errors are the common cause of medication error. Physicians should take full advantage of computerized physician order entry system (CPOE) to improve the medication safety. Verbal and written orders should replace with CPOE. Distraction can cause medication error and avoiding unnecessary distraction during medication administration can prevent a number of

Factors that were found to contribute to administration errors included: interruptions or distraction of nurses during medication administration, error-prone abbreviations, any type of intravenous medication, and nurse experience (ACSQHC, 2013). More so, findings from literature reviews have found that 2-3% of hospital admissions are medication-related (Roughead, Semple, Rosenfeld, 2016). Additionally, one in five preventable adverse drug events in hospitalised children is caused by medication errors (Neimann et al.,

Medication errors are happening more than they should and need to be brought under control. Eliminating medication errors has been a major problem in the healthcare setting; whether it be from prescribing, dispensing, or administering, it relates back to the doctors, pharmacists, nurses, and improperly taught patients. Medication errors is one thing that can be eliminated if certain protocol is followed and guidelines are met. If medication errors in the healthcare setting were eliminated, then those patients would be safer and all in all, healthier. To start off with let’s view the problem and take a brief tour of the history, then move on to the patients that are affected, understand how they are affected, and what harm it can cause to them. The last thing that will

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 National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention defines a medication error 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...related to professional practice, health care products, procedures, and systems, including prescribing; order communication; product labeling, packaging, and nomenclature; compounding; dispensing; distribution; administration; education; monitoring; and use” ("10 Medication Errors . . . and How You Can Prevent Them”). Medication errors account for approximately 1 out of 131 outpatient and 1 out of 854 inpatient deaths ("10 Medication Errors . . . and How You Can Prevent Them”). Although these medication errors have started to become recognized, the problem continues to persist.

The generated number from the unusual incidence occurrence report system were collected form the pharmacy and risk management. Four areas were evaluated, rate of accurate compliance with medication policy and procedures, success rate of medication administration, frequency of medication errors, rate of nurse-initiated medication error, and type of errors occurrence. One evaluated all the quarterly reports the year 2015 unusual occurrence of medication administration in the facility , 15% of error where wrong medications. Wrong medication can be are related to sound-alike and look-alike medications.

There are fore main reason for Medication Error. First, patient knowledge deficiency such as allergy information. Second, medication knowledge deficiency such as drug compatibility. Third, non-adherence to policies and procedures. For example, order the drug in non-verbal or abbreviation ways so that led to error. Before administer the drug, the nurse did not check the name. The health giver did not follow the nursing, pharmacy or treatment policy Forth, miscellaneous for example: the caregiver forget to administrate the drug, or equipment failure. There are many drugs names look alike or sound alike another, so that make the caregiver confuse between them. The top ten drugs that involved in the errors are: insulin 8% Next, the Morphine 2.3%

This continuation report is divided into three chapters. A background chapter covers medication errors, prescribing errors, and high risk medicines. The medication errors part of the chapter gives an overview about their history, definitions of medication errors, the burden of errors on the health system and economic burden, the highly vulnerable areas in health institutions, and types of medication errors based on the medication use process. The prescribing errors part discusses the historical background of prescribing errors, their frequency among other types of medication errors, and the epidemiological rate of prescribing errors in inpatient settings. The high risk medicines part describes the importance of these types of medicines and the definitions of high risk medicines developed by different organizations. The second chapter presents a systematic review of prescribing errors of high risk medicines in hospital including an introduction, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion section. The final chapter discusses plans for future work in the second year.

The general objective for this study is to provide reasons about incidence of factors that contribute to medication error among the nurses. This study also helps to determine the barrier towards medication error which can used as guidelines for the nurses to be more caution on certain situation during administering medication with hope it will develop the improvement to medication administration processes.