Medication Errors Essays

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.

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.

Patient information, drug instruction, communication amongst medical staff member, drug labels, patient literacy and the nurses knowledge of the medication are just to name a few. It only takes one of these aspects to be incorrect for a medication error to harm a patient, causing life changing or even life threating complications. Other circumstances that may contribute to medication errors include fatigue and staffing shortage. Nurses reported that fatigue, stress and understaffing increased the risk of making a medication error. Anderson, (2010). Majority of clinical staff work 12 hours shifts. Due to patient acuity and inadequate staffing, workload and hours many times are increased. sleep deprivation has been shown to be a major factor in medication errors. The diminished hours of sleep effect clarity of thought causing room for errors. Novice nursing has also been a component of many medication errors. Unexperienced nurses are overwhelmed with the increased workload and new responsibilities, which places them in danger of making these dangerous inaccuracies. While rushing to pass meds in a timely manner, critical medication errors reportedly made. Actively adhering to the five rights of medication administration measures while distributing patient medication can inherently cut down on errors made in the nursing

In Australian hospitals medication administration errors make up 9% or 1 in10 of all medication administrations. These errors include wrong doses, wrong intravenous infusion rates and errors made by prescribing doctors. Errors on discharge of patients were increasingly higher with up to 2 errors per patient related to doctors transcribing discharge medications (Roughead, Semple, & Rosenfeld, 2016).

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.

Medication Reconciliation is defined by the Joint Commission as the process of checking and rechecking a patient’s current medication list to the patient’s orders. Within a MedRec program, three steps must be followed to ensure patients have the correct medications at admission and discharge: Verification, Clarification, and Reconciliation (Greenwald et al., 2010; Ruggiero et al,. 2015). MedRec should not occur once, but multiple times especially when a patient moves from department to department. The more a patient moves, the more liable they are for a medication error due to poor communication. MedRec is done for the simple reason of catching those medication errors and correcting them before they can do any harm (The Joint Commission, 2006). Medication errors effect nearly 1.5 million people who enter the hospital setting in the USA. At least every patient has one medication discrepancy between admission and discharge, which leads to rehospitalizations due to hospital-setting medication errors (Institute of Medicine as cited by Wilson et al,. 2015). With nurses at the forefront of a patient’s medication regime, pressure is put on them to provide the necessary education and safety to prevent medication related rehospitalizations. Included in the causes for medication errors is miscommunication between departments taking care of the same patient (Allison et al., 2015). Many medication errors are preventable by the implementation of electronic orders. The use of electronic

Use special procedure for the use of high-risk medications using a multi-disciplinary approach, including written guidelines, checklists, pre-printed orders, double-checks, special packaging, special labeling, and education. (Institute of Medicine (IoM) Strategies Regarding Medication Practices, 2005).

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.

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).

There is no substitute for common sense and diligence, but technological advances may be of use in helping to prevent medication errors. Technological measures include automated medication dispensing machines, computerized IV administration, and the bar coding of both patients and drugs. A research study conducted among a select group of nursing students at a suburban New York university was designed to answer the question: Does the use of PDAs (personal digital assistants) with drug and medication calculation software improve the accuracy and efficiency of medication administration (Greenfield, 2007)? Results of this study upheld the hypothesis that the use of PDAs and medical software did, overall, improve the accuracy and efficiency of medication administration. The author of the study recommends that all nursing students be required to have PDAs with drug and calculation software on them. There is evidence to

Medication errors are one of the leading causes within a patient care setting thatcan jeopardize the client’s safety, and can even potentially be fatal. The six patient rights,right dose, time, route, medication, patient and documentation, all help prevent errors andpromote patient safety. The nurse needs to check off each patient right in order tosuccessfully pass medications. One of the leading causes for missing one of these patientrights is interruptions in the process of medication administration prep, or when activelygiving the medication to the patient. This paper will discuss why interruptions duringmedication administration can cause errors, and interventions the nurse can do to avoidputting the patient in

Safety is one of the most important traits of providing care to a patient. Medical mistakes are a growing concern within the health care field, as each year an estimated 400,000 lives are lost to preventable medical mistakes (James, 2013). One important subset of medical mistakes is medication errors. 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” (National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention, 2014). Health care

It is evident that patient safety is one of the most important principal in place as a nurse. To insure this there are many standards that are set in place that as a registered nurse need to be met, some including, professional responsibility and accountability, having knowledge based practice, ethical practice, service to the public and self-regulation (SRNA, 2014). “These standards and foundation competencies serve as the criteria against which all registered nurses, practising in all domains of nursing practice (direct care, education, administration, and research, and the evolving domain of policy) will be measured by clients, employers, colleagues and themselves”(SRNA, 2014). Having these standards allows register nurses and the public to have a clear understanding of what needs to be met in order to insure that there is proper patient safety. However there are still many issues that contribute to unacceptable patient safety, including medication administration errors, post operative care, and patients mental health. However, “medication errors are one of the most common types of medical errors that occur in healthcare institutions” (J.Choo, 2010). A medication error, according to The National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention “is 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

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.

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