Ways To Overcome Medication Errors In Nursing

Excellent outline for your quality improvement initiative that addresses medication errors. I like how you describe the closed-loop medication administration process that includes all members of the interprofessional team. Your references are also well researched and current. From the outline, it is unclear what the barriers and implementation strategy are to reduce medication errors. One suggestion I would make is to look at the grading rubric. There are four main points that the rubric requires to complete the objectives for the paper. I usually create headings that align with the rubric, this helps me organize my thoughts and to meet the objectives of the assignment.

The Eighth Amendment protects the right of prisoners before they are tried and after they are convicted. It also bars excessive fines and “cruel and unusual” punishments. In 1641, the Massachusetts Body of Liberties standards allowed the death penalty for blasphemy and had physical punishments such as cutting off ears and branding with a hot iron. But now the death penalty is no longer allowed in some states because its defined as “evolving standards of decency” and most are extremely cruel and the cost is expensive. The Eighth Amendment prohibits mentally ill persons to “cruel and unusual” punishments. The Supreme Court case in 2005 of Roper v. Simmons is about Christopher Simmons and he was sentenced to death in 1993, when he was only 17.

Over the last several years, a wide variety of health care organizations have been facing a number of challenges. This is because of pressures associated with: rising costs, increasing demands and larger numbers of patients. For many facilities this has created a situation where patient safety issues are often overlooked. This is because the staff is facing tremendous amounts of pressure, long hours and more patients. The combination of these factors has created a situation where a variety of hospitals need to improve their patient safety procedures. In the case of Sharp Memorial Hospital, they are focused on addressing these issues through different strategies. To fully understand how they are able to achieve these objectives requires looking at: specific ways the organization has responded to the crisis in medical errors, their definition of patient safety, the causes of errors, systematic barriers and transformations that have been adopted. Together, these different elements will provide the greatest insights as to how the facility is coping with the crisis in patient safety.

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.

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.

Safety is a priority to delivering healthcare, however, medication errors have been identified as a safety issue in healthcare. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has released two landmark reports that identify adverse outcomes that occur yearly from medication errors (Kohn, Corrigan, Donaldson, 2000; Institute of Medicine [IOM], 2001). Because nurses are intimately involved in providing patient care and medications, as a result of these reports attention was directed at the nursing profession to improve the mathematical competence of nurses. Therefore, it is imperative that nursing students are competent in converting between measurement systems, identifying common pharmacological abbreviations, methods of medication administration, reading medication labels, and calculating medication dosages in order to provide safe care. In the article, Teaching the Culture of Safety, the American Nurses Association (ANA) affirms that pre-licensure programs should include education on patient safety and system vulnerabilities that is expanded on throughout all nursing education and practice to promote a culture of safety (Barnsteiner, 2011). Therefore, the implementation of early medication calculation in a nursing program helps establish fundamental nursing mathematical skills to help nursing students become competent in medication calculation skills and combat medication errors and promote the delivery of safe nursing care (Newton, Harris, Pittilgio, & Moore, 2009).

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.

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.

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

Before this module, I never really thought of inappropriate medication prescribing by a physician as a medication error, or the inappropriate use of a medication. I agree with you that as patient you need to tell your doctors all of the different types of medication that you are on, in order to help prevent any type of medication errors. My grandma is on a lot of medication, but when she goes to her doctors’ appointments, she makes sure she brings all of her medication with her. I find this to be helpful for herself and for her other doctors. Even though a patient may bring her list of medications or bring her medications with them, as a doctor you should still ask about her medication and if there are any that she may of forgotten. If a physician

According to Cloete (2015), medication errors continue to be one of the leading causes of harm to patients in the healthcare settings. A medication error is considered an avoidable incident linked to medication that fails in the treatment process but leads to or has the possibility of creating a serious negative effect on the patient’s health.

The article “Development of a medication review service for patients with enteral tubes in a community teaching hospital” by Tracey Li, Pharm.D., Alison Eisenhart, Pharm.D., BCPS, and Jennifer Costello, Pharm.D., BCPS, BC-ADM explores the issues of medication errors in patients on enteral tube feedings. The study was done at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, New Jersey. The study was done in five phases. Phase one involved reviewing the patient’s medications and revealed that 43% of the patients were receiving at least one medication that should not be crushed. In phase two of the study they utilized the Institute for Safe Medication Practices to identify medication that should not be crushed. This phase also included adding “do not crush” warnings into their medication administration records and automated medication dispensing systems. During phase three they created an automatic substitution list. This list had medications that could not be crushed with a

Toby could feel the eyes of a bull staring through his adolescent body as if he was waving a red flag. His parents had given him the task of filming young Imogen as she blew out the cheap plastic candles on her decadent birthday cake. He steadily held his phone up to Imogen’s petite face in frame. Behind Toby came a throaty growl, “He shouldn’t be on that useless piece of crap! He’s thirteen years old for God’s sake!”.

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.

Financial accounting is one of the most popular major in the world. In the study of accounting, people must know and use expertly the three accounting statement, balance sheets, cash flow, and income statement. It is the most basic and useful skill in one’s career of accounting. But in the four basic financial statement, the balance sheet or called statement of financial position is the only one which describe a single point in time of a business’ calendar year. “In financial accounting, a balance sheet or statement of financial position is a summary of the financial balances of a sole proprietorship, a business partnership, a