Prevention Of Medication Errors And Nursing Practice

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

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

As a result medication errors are costly and seem to be relative to the staffing of nurses. Given that nurses make up such a large segment of the staff population, it is important to identify with the factors behind these medication errors.

Arrays of research analysis conveyed that medication error is indeed not the issue, however, how the error handled by the advanced nurse practitioners is the problem. It is imperative that advanced nurse practitioner mindful to the trust bestowed by being truthful and ethical with their patient and ensure that errors are promptly reported to the correct channels and patient alike when it befalls. Medication errors are never intentional, and instituting a dual stop check methodology in prescribing script can avert errors and protect our license from being at peril’s and certify that their patient trust is upheld

Another causative issue to medication error was poor staff knowledge about medications. 46% (n=32) of registered nurses and 37% (n=15) of student nurses stated that not having enough knowledge about medications increases the risk for creating an error. It is essential for the person passing meds to identify potential side effects, the drug type, contraindication and it interactions to reduce the patient may encounter for taking the medication. The qualitative review of registered nurses reinforced this issue.

A model of medication errors was developed on error-producing conditions like work environment, team factors, personal factors, medication-related support services and patient-specific factors, Chang and Mark (2009). Work environment factors looked at nursing and how they simultaneously manage multiple patients. Nurses shift their attention from patient to patient and often carry out several tasks at a time. Having more nurses staffed has been associated with a decrease in medication errors (McGillis Hall et al 2004). Team factors expressed that medication administration is a multistep process with many involved disciplines. Therefore, there needs to be a well-established communication across disciplines. Most important is the communication between nurses and providers. We need to also look at a nurses’ ability to recognize a potentially dangerous event early on. Expert nurses are expected to make fewer errors and recognize a change in a patients’ condition at its earliest. (Minick and Harvey

An analysis of given workloads in the event of medication errors in nursing was conducted by an exploratory-descriptive study with a quantitative approach. People who were part of the study had experienced some medication error in their work unit, with dose errors being the most frequent and the number of staff giving to the event of medication errors. Constructing successful ways to reach goals necessary to make something as small as possible in the event of medication errors and patient safety.

Medication administration is the foremost responsibility of a nurse (Sung et al. 2008). Pronovost et al. in 2005 mentioned that errors occur during medication administration which jeopardise in patients safety. Medication errors are the most common type of errors in the healthcare centres ultimately resulting in the high financial costs to

Going back to 2007, there were nearly 73,000 medication errors reported to the National Patient Safety Agency. 73,000 errors is far too many regardless whether there was harm done to the patient or not (Nute, 2014). According to a study done in 2009, the majority of the errors came from unclear or wrong dosage, wrong medication, delayed or omitted medication, wrong route, and giving medication to the wrong patient, with unclear or wrong dosage being the number one cause. One of the things that is being implemented now is the use of the five rights. A nurse or healthcare provider is required to administer the right patient the right medication at the right time using the right route and the right dose. This appeared to be the perfect solution to the problem until further studies were performed. The five rights provided some reduction in the number of medication errors but it did not solve the many steps that are to be taken before administering the medication to the patient. One of the most important tasks that needs to be met is knowing the medication before it is

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.

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

Two of the six rights of medication administration are giving the correct medication that was ordered to the correct patient that it was ordered for. Errors occur when the nurse either misreads the order for the medication, or does not check behind themselves. Nurses must learn to take the time to look at the drugs to avoid careless mistakes. Sometimes it may be necessary to have another nurse double check the drugs. To prevent errors in providing correct medication, the nurse should always call the provider if they have a question. A nurse should identify a patient by asking them to state two of the following: their name, date of birth, and/or hospital identification number before administering the medications. To prevent errors nurses should

One study had investigated reasons for the occurrence of medication errors, which included distractions, failure to identify the correct patient, similar names of medications and miscalculated doses (Mayo & Duncan, 2004). These factors are preventable measures that registered nurses have absolute control of. By following the fundamental framework of the “five rights”, it can prevent an error to occur and ultimately prevent a patient from harm. This framework is beneficial while educating nursing students but it is also important that novice nurses and experienced nurses continue to follow the “five rights” because it sets the fundamental guideline of what should be identified at each process.

Medication administration is the priority of patient care. Nurses are the first line of defense in preventing adverse effects in patient health related to medication errors that occur due to understaffing of hospital units. Medication errors cause detrimental consequences involving the welfare of patients, which alarmingly cause more than seven thousand deaths per year in the United States (Flynn, Liang, Dickson, Xie, & Suh, 2012). Studies have revealed strong correlations between understaffing of nurses as a contributing factor in errors in medication administration to patients. A survey conducted in the United States of five hundred hospitals has shown that eighty-five percent of medication administration errors were due to the lack of inadequate staffing where the involved nurse missed critical steps in the delivery of medications (Frith et al., 2012).