The Importance Of Medication Errors

Patient centered care and patient safety are the most important roles in nursing. “Serious medication errors are common in hospitals and often occur during order transcription or administration of medication” (Poon et al., 2010. p. 1). One important aspect of nursing is drug administration. It is a multidisciplinary task including doctors, pharmacist and nurses. This paper will show evidence that using electronic medication systems instead of paper based systems to administer medication will reduce medication errors.

Patient safety is of high importance in the healthcare field. Medication errors are still of great concern in the healthcare setting. These errors are only one of many safety concerns. Medication errors occur often enough to be problematic, causing researchers to try to find the problem and come up with a solution. This error is a massive problem when a big part of nursing is delivering medications to patients. A health facility is thought to be a safe environment, when incidents like medication errors

This integrative review sought to identify and understand the impact of information technology in on medication errors. The review of 14 papers shows that the implementation of medication management systems, which include CPOE, BCMA and automated dispensing machines has successfully reduced medication errors and adverse medication events significantly, particularly the two most susceptible stages of prescription and administration of drugs (Armada et al., 2014).

Bar-coded medication administration (BCMA) systems are also commonly used by nurses to improve medication administration in inpatient settings. As an illustration, a study in 2007 showed that BCMA systems reduced medication administration errors by 54-87% in hospitals in the US. It has been reported that a large number of medication errors happens at care transition points, i.e., during admission, transfer and discharge of patients. Thus, medication reconciliation at all transition points could significantly improve medication safety. In fact, preliminary evidences suggest that application of electronic medication reconciliation systems are quite effective in reducing such errors. Additionally, electronic personal health record (EHR) systems can be used to reduce medication errors. These IT systems allow patients to access, coordinate their health information and make it available to their healthcare providers. IT systems are also used to reduce medication errors of omission. As an example, recent studies have demonstrated that smart electronic discharge systems utilized in some hospitals can alert physicians to prescribe important medications.

The VA Outpatient clinic has been looking for ways to improve quality of care, operational efficiency, and cut costs by implementing various improvement strategies. The use of information technology in healthcare to improve patient care continues to be an admirable goal. The VA Outpatient clinic currently do not use technology for medication administration. Medication errors are a common cause of injury and death, which is seen in the health care arena. In 2008, it has been reported that nearly 200,000 Americans die from medical errors that could have been preventable (Andel, 2012). Medication errors alone has cost the United States $19.5 billion in 2008 (Andel, 2012). Out of this cost, 87 percent or $17 million were diverted to additional medical care needed, such as hospitalization, outpatient services, ancillary services, and prescription

One of the most complex challenges that healthcare facilities face, are the high occurrences of medication errors. Due to increased incidences of medication errors, it has become a major priority for healthcare systems to find preventions that could simply decrease medical errors. With evidence provided from different research healthcare systems are moving more towards using computerized information technology for simple automated notes, too bed-side bar code medication administration, electronic medication reconciliation and physician order entry’s as strategies to decrease medication errors (Agrawal, A. 2009).

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

One patient required treatment with naloxone and the other required additional monitoring, ISMP Canada alerted the manufacturer who subsequently made changes in their packaging.” (Koczmara, C., Dueck, C., & Jelincic, V., 2006).

One of the many responsibilities of a nurse is administering medications. Improper transcription, dispensing, administering, and reporting can result in medication errors. The article Simple Steps to Reduce Medication Errors recognizes how detrimental errors can be to the patient and the facility (Chu, 2016). An error in medication can lead to an extended stay for the patient, resulting in serious harm or death.

An analysis by the World Health Organization stipulated medication errors 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. Such events may be related to professional practice, health care products, procedures, and systems, including prescribing, order communication, product labelling, packaging, and nomenclature, compounding, dispensing, distribution, administration, education, monitoring, and use" (WHO, 2016). This particular interpretation is expansive and proposes that errors may be preventable at different levels. Errors in the administration of medications have also been described as a decrease in the likelihood of treatment in being prompt and effective, or as an "elevation in the risk of harm relative to medicines and prescribing compared with generally accepted practice" (Lisby, Nielsen, Brock, Mainz,

Medication administration errors can be made when patients are not properly identified. A consistent method for the proper identification of patients is needed to ensure patient safety. Many institutions have implemented technologies aimed at reducing error rates, for example, bar-code assisted medication (BCAM) administration, but the practice and rate of use varies, and medication errors are still a problem in the healthcare setting. The purpose of the study is to examine the effect of implementing a visual aid that will prompt nurses to scan patient’s identification bands prior to medication administration on the occurrence of medication administration errors.

“Any error in the process of prescribing, dispensing, or administration of a drug, irrespective of whether such errors lead to adverse consequences or not, are the single most preventable cause of patient Harm.

Within the first seven days of admission and readmission in a skilled nursing facility older people have an increase in medication errors. The study was put together to evaluate the process-related factors and structure that my cause and increase in medication errors as well as harm. The residents in North Caroline skilled nursing facilities during months of October 2006 to September 2007 showed medication errors from the medication error quality initiative-individual error database. When looking at the prescribing errors they were much less common than administration errors. However, they were much more likely to cause harm to patients. On the contrary looking at structure and process measures of quality, they were related to the volume