Foundations of Nursing Research Paper 2022

Running Head: FOUNDATION OF NURSING 2 1
Foundation of Nursing 2
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FOUNDATIONS OF NURSING 2 2
Introduction
For a long time, the standard definition of a medication error has never been stipulated.
Several firms that deal with medication resolutions have made attempts to define the term
medication error. In this essay, we shall use the definition from the Australian National,
Coordinating for a Medication Error. It states that medication error is a preventable action that
has caused or lead to wrong medication use by the patients, consumers, and healthcare
professionals. It can result as a result of the professional practice, the system of prescription,
healthcare products, packaging, and product labelling. As well, other factors that can
contribute to medication errors are drug compounding, administration, distribution,
dispensation, and distribution of medication use (World Health Organization, 2016). This
paper seeks to identify and discuss the primary sources of medication errors and as well as
address the effects of medication errors as seen in the lives of the healthcare providers and the
patients.
Some approaches have been put in place to help classify medications errors. They
include classification based on the stage and in the sequence of medication consumption
process that provides for dispensing, prescribing, transcribing, monitoring, and administering
the medicine (Mekonnen, McLachlan, & Jo-anne, 2016). The second approach is to note the
kind of errors occurring; these errors might include the wrong dose, medication,
administration route, administration to the patient. Besides, other approaches focus on
whether medical mistakes happen due to human errors during planning actions or the
execution of the appropriately planned operations. As well, the errors can be categorized
according to the level of severity and many more.

FOUNDATIONS OF NURSING 2 3
Discussion on the Causes of Medication errors
Several studies have been conducted to examine the factors associated with medication
errors. It has proven so hard to estimate the prevalence rate of mistakes that arise as a result of
the imperfect medication execution process. Overall, the proportion of medication errors in
primary healthcare is recorded so low. The Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy
related to the factors that involved the patients encountering medical errors constituted 12% of
the total patients admitted in the Australian health facilities (Brown, Bussell, Dutta, Davis,
Strong, & Mathew, 2016). The risk factors were contributed by poor healthcare coordination,
costs related to medicines and medical services, hospitalization, and multi-morbidity.
The following are factors that influence medication errors contributed by healthcare
professionals and patients:
 Inadequate knowledge of the risks involved
 Poor interaction between the healthcare professionals and the patients
 Tight routine leading to fatigue of the healthcare experts
 Inadequate drug knowledge and experience
 Emotional and physical health concerns
 Inadequate therapeutic training.
 The language barrier and literacy level of the patient
 Complicated clinical cases such as polypharmacy, several health conditions,
and high medication associated risks.
Besides, other factors are caused by the healthcare work environment, medicines,
tasks, and computerized information systems. They include:
From the work environment, we have: