Medication Errors Essay

Improved patient safety is the most essential advantage of the BCMA system. “On average a hospital patient is subjected to at least one medication error per day (IOM, 2006)”(Foote). BCMA significantly reduces medication errors that cause a compromise in patient safety. The BCMA verifies the five rights of medication administration before a patient receives a medication by the software alerting the nurse if there is a contraindication between the medicine scanned and the patient’s orders. A pilot study conducted at a 300-bed community hospital found that the BCMA system reduced medication errors by 80% (Foote). Fowler et al states that “decrease in errors related to the wrong patient was a direct result of the bar code system (Fowler).”

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.

Safe medication practices are key to every nurse since it results to safe medication administration. When medication is not administered correctly it results to adverse drug event which refers to harm to the patient that includes mental harm, physical harm, or loss of function which is as a result of a medication error (practices, 2017). Medication errors occur when a mistake is committed by a person administering medication and in order to avoid these errors safe medication practices need to be adhered to. Some of these

Medication errors are not only caused by human errors, technology defects contributes to this growing epidemic. Computerized prescribed order entry, bar-coding systems, electronic medication administration and automated dispensing cabinets all contributes to medication errors. However the use of these technologies have included benchmarking to help healthcare facilities test and evaluate new systems for use on the units (Admi, et al., 2013).

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,

Medication errors are a reoccurring issue that has plagued the medical field since the beginning of drug administration. In order to understand how to handle medication errors, one must first understand what a medication error is. The concept of medication error can be defined as: “any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or harm to a patient” (Kee, 2012, 125). Examples of medication errors include: misreading a patient’s medical file, not clarifying illegible prescriptions, an incomplete patient assessment, confusing look-alike and sound-alike medications, and lack of better understanding if a medication can be crushed or split. To better understand medication errors and medication safety one must understand the impact it can have on the medical community and patient care, ways to prevent medication errors, and what should be done in a situation where a medication error has occurred.

There are many rules and precautions taken to ensure that medication errors do not happen. In nursing school students in the RNs and BSN program are both taught ways to not make medication errors. A study done by Margret Harris, Laura Pittiglio, Sarah Newton, and Gary Moore was done to see if simulation can be used to improve medication administration to reduce medical errors.

The purpose of this project is to decrease potential medication errors in the facility. This will be done by following some strategies:

This study described discharge prescription medication errors written for emergency department patients. This study used content analysis in a cross-sectional design to systematically categorize prescription errors found in a report of 1000 discharge prescriptions submitted in the electronic medical record in February 2015. Two pharmacy team members reviewed the discharge prescription list for errors. Open-ended data were coded by an additional rater for agreement on coding categories. Coding was based upon majority rule. Descriptive statistics were used to address the study objective. Categories evaluated were patient age, provider type, drug class, and type and time of error. The discharge prescription error rate out of 1000 prescriptions

Nursing medication errors were examined by having nurses take surveys based on their perception of why medication errors are occurring as well as visiting their work setting and observing any errors. Nurses are encouraged to take precaution when administering medications to ensure that the correct medication as well as the dose, is given to the correct patient. It is imperative for hospitals to enforce medication stipulations to ensure that nurses are double checking medication labels. Studies show that causes of medication errors are due to nurse’s not understanding protocol, administration errors related to overworked weary

Medication errors are a big deal because you are at risk of ending someone's life by a simple mistake because you didn't recheck the medication you are administering to the patient. In 2007, a nine year old named Alyssa Hemmelgarn became sick and she kept taking medicine but wasn't getting any better. She was sick with swollen glands and cold sores. When Alyssa and her mother went to the doctors , the doctor diagnosed her with leukemia. A week passed by and she was getting treatment. Seems like she was getting better with all the medication she has been taking until one day she started receiving the symptoms and soon after passed away in the hospital. It turns out that the doctor noted her as “anxious” so they medicated her with ativan. The

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 can be very deadly, and mainly happens in the healthcare settings today in American. Medication Error cause around 10,000 of death and deaths every year far as given the wrong medication, to an patient can have a very bad allergic reaction from that wrong drug was given. On the other hand the most errors may happen if the drug name are similar to each other, also if it’s a sign of poor hand writing or poor transcriptions as well. To try to prevent mistakes is to pay an close attention to the medication, make sure you ask the patient his or her Date of Birth, and you can also scan the patient arm band. I think the safes way to go in check it 3 times before you initially give the patient the medication. Just to be on the

I chose goal 3 because as a practicing student nurse, I’m aware that medication error is common in the health practices, but it can be avoided if proper knowledge and resources such as the eMAR, BCMA and NUPASS guidelines are implemented to secure patients or resident’s safety when administering medication.

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