Ways To Overcome Medication Errors In Nursing

Medication Administration Safety It is evident that patient safety is one of the most important principal in place as a nurse. To insure this there are many standards that are set in place that as a registered nurse need to be met, some including, professional responsibility and accountability, having knowledge based practice, ethical practice, service to the public and self-regulation (SRNA, 2014). “These standards and foundation competencies serve as the criteria against which all registered nurses, practising in all domains of nursing practice (direct care, education, administration, and research, and the evolving domain of policy) will be measured by clients, employers, colleagues and themselves”(SRNA, 2014). Having these standards allows register nurses and the public to have a clear understanding of what needs to be met in order to insure that there is proper patient safety. However there are still many issues that contribute to unacceptable patient safety, including medication administration errors, post operative care, and patients mental health. However, “medication errors are one of the most common types of medical errors that occur in healthcare institutions” (J.Choo, 2010). A medication error, according to The National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention “is 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

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 Errors Shonda Delmage Baker College of Cadillac 04/24/2015 Medication Errors 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.

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.

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

Examine the Administration's Health Care Delivery System in the United States 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.

Title: Nursing Math Grade level or classification: Entry level nursing students School or Institution: New Mexico Junior College Allied Health Program Subject or Topic: Dosage Calculations, Nursing Math Rationale 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).

The need for new solutions to the problem of medical mistakes is evident. These three strategies are important to decreasing those errors. Medical mistake education during nursing school sets the groundwork for building the next generation of safety oriented nurses. Along with increased education, implementation of medication safety zones is a vital change needed to help lessen medication mistakes. While there is no one way of totally eliminating safety issues, these three strategies are relatively simple, low cost ways of decreasing medication

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

My experience with issue of medication error occurred during my pre-graduate clinical in a long term facility, I and the preceptor were administering medications during lunch time. One of the residents came from leave of absence, prior to her LOA, the daughter who was the POA was given the resident’s medications, including insulin. When she returned to the facility, her medication was administered as per scheduled time without having knowledge when the last insulin was given, fifteen minutes thereafter, the personal care provider noticed that this particular resident was not eating and appears to be sweating, the PCP reported to us, on assessment she was found to be shaking, sweating and loss of consciousness and her glucose level was

Thank you for educational and insightful post. You did an excellent job explaining all necessary steps how to deal with medication errors. According to Anderson and Townsend (2015), medication errors are the most common healthcare errors. Each error can cost somewhere between $2,000 to $ 8,750 of in-patient expenses and leads to more than 7,000 deaths annually. Interruptions and distractions, if it is to a prescriber or whoever is administering the medication, are among most common reasons why medication error occurs.

There are numerous human factors that can contribute to deviating from safe practices leading to errors, near misses, and adverse events. Some of these errors may be caused by barriers to change for example, during the implementation of barcode medication administration (BCMA). When this nurse’s facility first rolled out BCMA, some nurses were frustrated due to the changes and multiple steps involved to administer medication for already busy bedside nurses. Since nurses had to scan the ID band, some worked around the policy and left an extra one on the computer because they did not want to wake up the patient (infants, toddlers, adolescents) middle of the night trying to find the ID band on their wrist. Some may be also technologically challenged making it harder to accept the change. Bypassing the intentional key safety

The review of literature included sources from 2003 -2015. As stated 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

Medication Error in relation to standard 1 of nursing practice Introduction The words medication error elicit fear in every nurse. According to Stefanacci and Riddle (2016), preventable medication errors are responsible for third reason of death apart from heart disease and cancer in the United States. As a nurse, it is important to obtain skills and knowledge to prevent them as these errors could result in extended hospitalisation of patients, simultaneously a burden of health care cost. These errors could be reduced by identifying the problems which lead to medication errors and following certain protocols in a coordinated environment.

Medication administration errors are a big problem in the nursing field. However, with the infusion platform, this prevents medication errors from happening. The infusion platform allows nurses to program the prescription ordered for the patient and blocks any low or high medication doses to enter the patient. With this new