Oppressor

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.

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,

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

The nurse is responsible and accountable for individual nursing practice and determines the appropriate delegation of tasks consistent with the nurse’s obligations to provide optimum patient care. (Bosek & Savage, 2007, p. 59) The nursing student realized that she wasn’t an expert in pharmacokinetics and requested the help of a pharmacist to provide quality care for her patient. (Bosek & Savage, 2007, p. 59) Delegation is a huge responsibility and should never be taken lightly. The duty of the nurse is to ensure the patient receives quality care. This means delegating responsibilities to others to ensure that care is met. If a nurse feels she is unsure of a certain area of care, that nurse is obligated to find the precise person who can provide that care. The author’s daughter (Bella) was in the hospital for a reoccurring MRSA infection. When the nurse walked in the door they were asked a question regarding infectious disease protocols and how best to handle the situation. Instead of giving an answer they thought might be correct, the nurse requested that an infectious disease doctor be called in to answer all questions concerning the patient.

One common mistakes exhibited by professionals in the field is delegation of duties by persons. Nurses should be wary of delegating duties to health care assistant because nurses should be aware of the abilities of the person with whom he or she is delegating duties. This is to minimize any chance of poor service delivery. Poor patient attendance by a person tasked with the duty at the time of delivery will extend the liability to the nurse delegating duties.

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

As clinical site co-ordinator with many years of clinical experience I feel competent in the drug administration via a variety of routes. Generally the patients I attend have become acutely unwell with most prescriptions not having the third eye of a pharmacist and most drugs being delivered intravenously. It is imperative therefore that the prescription and drugs always be thoroughly checked which relies on good communication throughout. Furthermore, most emergency drugs have a protocol for administration developed by the hospital. However within this situation the nurse is generally the last defence before any medication error actually occurs, therefore it is the nurses responsibility to ensure the prescription is correct and to challenge prescription written

Nurses were required to confirm the right patient, medication, dosage, time, and route. The five rights aided in the process but errors were still made. Nurses working long hours, mandatory overtime, budget cuts, increased patient nurse ratio, and high patient acuities are also noted to contribute to the increase of errors. For many of these issues there is not a quick remedy. Geiger shared the elimination of retribution for medications errors would help decrease the effects associated with medication administration.

When I say this, however, most people would picture the nurse giving the wrong medication due to lack of focus on the tasks at hand. While this could happen, I have noticed during my time at hospitals that the doctor orders are still hand written for the most part. Consequently, they can be very hard to be read legibly much less correctly translated into proper medication dosages. The first suggestion I would give to an organization would be that they required all orders to be submitted securely, by the doctors, to the pharmacy be electronic means.

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 (

In a medical workplace environment, having effective communication is very important. In my workplace, patient and staff communication is very important to run a clinic proactively. Working as a medical assistant for two different doctors can be very stressful and overwhelming at times because communication with them can be sometimes misconstrued. One experience where communication was effective if my workplace is, I had an elderly patient who was referred by another facility and Dr, come in without any historical records or recent testing documentation which is required by the Dr. My job as the doctor’s medical assistant is to get the history of present illness of the patient before the doctor comes to see the patient. As I was communicating with the patient, asking for the proper documentation, I notice the patient did not have all of her

A Corrective Action Plan meeting was held on 8/3/15. Present during the meeting were Elena Briceno, Regional Director, People's Care, Dara Mikesell, Manager of Quality Assurance, Kristen Gener SG/PRC Service Coordinator, and Adriane Picazo, Manager of Client Services, RS1. Plan of Correction: A, Staff will dispense medications as prescribed by physician B, The Administrator arranged for staff to received medication training by a pharmacy on July 24, 1=2015, verification of this training was submitted on August 3, 2015. C, The Administrator will instruct the staff to continue following the present Medication Dispensing Protocol, which indicates that DSP A dispenses the medications and DSP B verifies the medications with the Medication Administration

As defined by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA, 2015), a medication error is “any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or harm to a patient.” In order to prevent harm by medications, nurses and nursing students alike are required to adhere to the “seven patient rights,” which help eliminate any possible errors in the medication administration process. These seven rights include: right patient, right drug, right dose, right route, right time, right action and right documentation. However, many medication errors continue to occur because one or more of these rights is either violated, or omitted altogether. Research done by Polifroni, et al. (2003), shows that the most common errors in medication administration are those involving the time of administration and the dosage amount. These errors are often a direct result of the nurse’s increasingly chaotic practicing environment. Increasing nursing shortages create a larger patient load for each nurse, making is easier for the nurse to get distracted and inadvertently miss the dose,

In my current job I have to communicate with my doctor, the other assistant, the owner, our patients, insurance companies, and attorneys offices. With the doctor I work for I have no issues with communication. We are able to speak freely and not hurt each others feelings about what we may need to say. Considering it is a small practice, it takes all of us working as a team to get all of the work finished. This makes it easier for me and the doctor to work together and communicate, knowing that we have to rely on each other to get tasks done each day on a priority basis. The only communication barrier that I may have with the doctor is when we are having issues agreeing on how certain things should be coded under the new ICD-10 diagnosis codes

Business communication needs to become interpersonal again. No matter how we believe our human forms came into existence, we were built to need personal contact and function best with face-to-face communication. As children, we desired comfort from touch, a hug from our mothers. As teenagers, we held hands with our boyfriend or girlfriend. As adults in the workforce, we still need to feel that connection and comfort with our families and the people we work with. As Susan RoAne (2008), owner of a speaking, consulting, and coaching business, discusses one way we feel this connection is through getting to know and building trust by communicating in-person. Through this interpersonal interaction, we not only feel more comfortable around