Pediatric Medication Safety And The Medical Field

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

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 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

One of the critical core components of Skilled Nursing Facility is medication administration. As cited by Tenhunen, Tanner, and Dahlen (2014), they stated that 88% of the residents living in the nursing homes are aged 65 years old and older. They discussed that every five of administered medications in nursing home has one probability of error. This means that about half of the residents have the possibility of two or more medication errors daily. This applies to the Pasadena Care Center (PCC) because its residents are mostly older adults who require medications on a daily basis. Moreover, residents are prescribed with multiple medications, which make them vulnerable to medication errors. The staff at PCC is trying their best to ensure safe medication administration, however, it still in need of a major change. The goal of the proposed change is to decrease the medication errors in this organization to ensure patient safety.

In healthcare today, when hospitals are judged upon patient safety standards, it is critical to prevent errors involving medication administration. Distractions while preparing and administering medications, has been report as one of the leading causes of medication errors. Distractions while nurses are administering medications can lead to poor patient outcomes and even sentinel events. Nurses and nurse managers are responsible for maintaining a unit with minimal distractions. When distractions are minimized throughout medication administration process, a decrease in medication errors will occur and lead to increased patient outcomes.

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 (

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

This article talks about human errors in dispensing drugs. Adverse drug reactions have reportedly claimed more than 100,000 lives in America. Pharmacy mistakes may have contributed to the deaths as a result. Studies uncovered that these human errors were mainly caused by distractions and interruptions. Other contributing factors include long working hours, heavy workloads, complicated procedures, misinterpretation and work stress. Pharmacists were generally asked to handle a huge amount of tasks within a short span of time. The tasks include reviewing patient’s profile, verifying with patient for any drug allergies, dispensing drugs and counseling for new drugs. Studies have also shown that over the years, the demands for prescriptive drugs

The ability to become reflective in practice has become a necessary skill for health professionals. This is to ensure that health professionals are continuing with their daily learning and improving their practice. Reflective practice plays a big part in healthcare today and is becoming increasingly noticed.

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.

Regardless of various methods in order to prevent medication mistake, nurses should playing a key role as a front line of take care of patients’ safety. According to the Institute for Safe Medication Practices and the Agency for Healthcare Research Quality (AHRQ), there are some recommendations in order to reduce medication administration through using three techniques such as unit dose dispensing, bar-coding medication administration (BCMA) and smart infusion pumps. Such combination strategies are effective to the wrong patient, the wrong medication, incorrect drug dose. Also it may reduce the incidence of medical errors associated with the administration of the drug at the wrong time, however, there is still arise the medication errors related

Mion and Sandhu (2016) stated “at the individual level, nurses must practice safe medication administration behaviors prior to every administration of every medication: compare the medication to the medical administration record, label the medication throughout the process, check two forms of patient identification, immediate documentation, and explain to patient” (p. 154). By following the 7 rights of medication administration, nurses can reduce the number medication errors. Nurses are held accountable for the medication that they are administering and must “continually

This following article will look at two articles and focus on aspects of safety medication administration in nursing practice by the staff nurses. This area is interesting because the previous report showed approximately 5.6% of Non-intravenous doses administered to adult hospital patients, and it has been estimated that 0.6-1.2% of medication administration errors may led to severe harm even dearth (Mcleod et al, 2013). Leape et al (1995) indicated that nurses were responsibility for 86% of all medication error interception, regardless of the original errors. The nurses play the important role to identify the causes of medication errors and prevent 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) clarify that all the clinical, cost effective and safe use of medicines to ensure patients get the maximum benefit from the medicine they need and the same time 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 helps nurses in addressing questions related to best possible care and improve patients’ outcome.It is embedded with code the nurses are expected to use best possible evidence in the nursing practice in order to provide the

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

Every day there is a constant trust adhered to many different people in the profession of Nursing—the decision of what will help patients in terms of medicine, and the confidence to make these decisions. One false act or one slight misdiagnoses of medication to a patient could be the prime factor in whether the patient lives or dies. Nurses in hospitals across the country are spread thin, and thus makes the probability of mistakes higher. If a medicinal dose is off by even one decimal a patient could die, so the only real answer is for nurses to not be afraid to ask for assistance, always follow procedure and voice opinion is they feel something is wrong.