Mistakes Are Made In Prescription

​Nurses have an ethical and legal responsibility to assess a patient’s need for a drug, administer it safely and correctly and evaluate the response to it. They should always make patient safety a priority because patients rely on the nurse’s skills, knowledge and professionalism.

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.

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,

some real changes within the month in hopes to keep his job, however, as we have

Medication mistakes is a critical global issue and the utmost principle widespread dilemma that terrorizes patient safety that might spearhead to disability or death if not detected, and medication error are virtually never deliberate and regrettably occur in healthcare

About1.5 million people are harmed yearly in the U.S. because of medication errors, The National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention (NCCMERP) defines the meaning of medication error, they define it 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…”. (Stoppler, 2015) It is a serious topic in the nursing field that should be addressed and prevented.

Over past decade, several investigator groups have attempted to create, validate, and implement screening tools to detect prescription errors, and listing the drugs that carry a high risk of inappropriate in elderly patients. Screening tools including USA Beers Criteria [6], Medication Appropriate Index (MAI) [7] and the European Screening Tool of Older Person's Potentially Inappropriate Prescriptions (STOPP) and Screening Tool to Alert doctors to the Right Treatment (START) [8] are the most widely used criteria for the detection of prescription errors. Explicit criteria of STOPP/START criteria contains specific clinical and drug recommendations that can reduce PIP in older patients and was considered ‘most promising’ compared to other existing

Preventable ADEs are integrated to “medication errors” , while non-preventable ADEs are considered adverse drug reactions (ADRs) that could not be avoided. Errors that may cause harm but patient do not experience the potential harm are termed potential ADEs.

drug use. Our study shows the occurrence of MEs at each phase of medication use cycle. Along

Medication errors have contributed to healthcare issues and created problematic discrepancies affecting costs, safety issues, qualitative concerns, and economic effects. This review will provide the background, rationale, and the overview of multiple issues causing medication errors. Issues contributing to negative effects of the health system will be identified including how specific issues affect patients, and adverse drug effects. Effects on health costs will be reviewed as they relate to higher health costs, in addition to the impact higher costs have on the economy.

This paper addressed the problem of medication errors in the healthcare setting and how they occur. Although medication errors sound harmless, it actually injures hundreds of thousands of individuals a year in the United States. According to Williams and Ashrcoft (2013) “ An estimated median of 19.1 % of total opportunities for error in hospitals.” Although medication errors can occur in any floor at any moment it is more prevalent to occur in the modes of transferring a patient. As per Johnson, Guirguis, and Grace (2015) “An estimated 60% of all medication errors occur during transit of care. The National Transitions of Care Coalition defines a transition of care as the movement of patients between healthcare locations, providers, or different levels of care within the same location as their conditions and care needs change, [and] frequently involves multiple persons, including the patient, the family member or other caregiver(s), nurse(s), social worker(s), case manager(s), pharmacist(s), physician(s), and other providers.” During this time frame the patient is changing settings and, the person responsible for the health care decisions is also changed.

Before the end of this course, we had group presentation where we had real cases with patient prescription error, and we had to present to the class the cause, effect of that error. My team project was really excellent. Several things I did to perform excellently in this project was teamwork-getting along with my teammates and trying to understand their opinion, I was the leader of it who decided when to do it, where to meet, how to do specific things, and what to do. I was extremely responsible with this work which took our group to the right path. Something I excelled was being confident when presenting in front of my classmates and instructor, I had enough confident to present my point and was ready for any question coming toward me; however,

The article “Development of a medication review service for patients with enteral tubes in a community teaching hospital” by Tracey Li, Pharm.D., Alison Eisenhart, Pharm.D., BCPS, and Jennifer Costello, Pharm.D., BCPS, BC-ADM explores the issues of medication errors in patients on enteral tube feedings. The study was done at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, New Jersey. The study was done in five phases. Phase one involved reviewing the patient’s medications and revealed that 43% of the patients were receiving at least one medication that should not be crushed. In phase two of the study they utilized the Institute for Safe Medication Practices to identify medication that should not be crushed. This phase also included adding “do not crush” warnings into their medication administration records and automated medication dispensing systems. During phase three they created an automatic substitution list. This list had medications that could not be crushed with a

“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.

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