Medication Errors From A Nursing

Medication errors in the hospital setting have significant potential to result in serious injury and even death, thus effecting patients, families, health care professionals, and hospitals. Approximately 400,000 adverse drug effects (ADE) occur each year (Institute of Medicine, 2006). Considering that not all medication errors are discovered and reported, this number is likely to be underestimated. These errors not only contribute to patient morbidity and mortality, but also cause increased length of stay and hospital expenses. It is estimated by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) that $3.5 billion is spent annually as a result of ADEs (IOM, 2006).

This article will look at two articles and focus on aspects of safety medication administration in nursing practice by the staff nurses. This is interesting area because the previous report on the medication administration error in the UK shows that approximately 5.6% of doses administered to adult hospital patients and it has been estimated that 0.6-1.2% of medication administration errors may lead to severe harm even death (Mcleod et al, 2013). Leape et al (1995) indicated that nurses were responsible for 86% of all medication error interception, regardless of the original errors. The nurses play the important role in identifying the causes of medication errors and preventing medication administration errors in nursing practice in order to provide safe care toward the service users (Henneman et al, 2010). The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA 2004) documented that the health professionals need to effectively and safely use medicines to ensure patients get the maximum benefit from the medicine; meanwhile minimizing the potential harm. This article will be critiqued on the different types of evidence which explored safety medication administration in the nursing practice toward service user. Using evidence is important in nursing practice because it can help nurses in addressing questions related to best possible care and improve patients’ outcome. It is embedded within the code the nurses are expected to use best possible evidence in the nursing

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.

There are many different variables that go into a scenario of a medication error. Nurses carry a huge role with ensuring patient safety during a medication administration. According to Härkänen, Ahonen, Kervinen, Turunen and Vehviläinen-Julkunen (2015), the study that was performed on a medical surgical floor yielded information that allows administration to examine plausible reason behind the medical errors. The area within nursing that need to have an improvement is reducing patient medical errors due to patient to nurse ratio in combination with reducing distraction and acuity. The study that performed by Härkänen et al. (2015), observed that patients had medications of upwards to 20 regular medications, and giving them 3 times minimally. Nurses encounter many types of distractions during the times that they are administering medication. The first issue with this is that the patient has high acuity

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,

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,

Safety is a priority to delivering healthcare, however, medication errors have been identified as a safety issue in healthcare. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has released two landmark reports that identify adverse outcomes that occur yearly from medication errors (Kohn, Corrigan, Donaldson, 2000; Institute of Medicine [IOM], 2001). Because nurses are intimately involved in providing patient care and medications, as a result of these reports attention was directed at the nursing profession to improve the mathematical competence of nurses. Therefore, it is imperative that nursing students are competent in converting between measurement systems, identifying common pharmacological abbreviations, methods of medication administration, reading medication labels, and calculating medication dosages in order to provide safe care. In the article, Teaching the Culture of Safety, the American Nurses Association (ANA) affirms that pre-licensure programs should include education on patient safety and system vulnerabilities that is expanded on throughout all nursing education and practice to promote a culture of safety (Barnsteiner, 2011). Therefore, the implementation of early medication calculation in a nursing program helps establish fundamental nursing mathematical skills to help nursing students become competent in medication calculation skills and combat medication errors and promote the delivery of safe nursing care (Newton, Harris, Pittilgio, & Moore, 2009).

Patient centered care and patient safety are the most important roles in nursing. “Serious medication errors are common in hospitals and often occur during order transcription or administration of medication” (Poon et al., 2010. p. 1). One important aspect of nursing is drug administration. It is a multidisciplinary task including doctors, pharmacist and nurses. This paper will show evidence that using electronic medication systems instead of paper based systems to administer medication will reduce medication errors.

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

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.

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

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

The National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA 2010), defines a drug error as ‘any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate use of patient harm. Although not all drug errors have lead to patient harm it is important to recognise that if a mistakes has been

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

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