Medication Error: Critical Healthcare Condition and Strategies for Prevention

Running head: HEALTHCARE ASSIGNMENT
HEALTHCARE ASSIGNMENT
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Introduction
Critical thinking, decision making and problem solving are the aspects that helps to
analyze the attributes that could make healthcare processed effective and of high quality (Cloete,
2016). There are multiple situations in nursing profession that requires the professionals to be
active and aware of their surroundings so that they could use their problem solving skills to
identify critical complications. Then depending upon the complexity of the condition, the nursing
professionals or healthcare professionals use their abilities to overcome the critical health
complications of patients (Flannery et al., 2016). There are multiple aspects that is included in
the problem solving related personal attribute such as the active listening ability, creativity,
communication and other aspects and analysis and active listening abilities due to which
majority of the patients understand the effectiveness of the care process. Similarly critical
thinking and critical reasoning abilities are also termed as aspects that help the nursing
professionals to understand the importance of care process (Latimer et al., 2017). Further in the
process they should be able to understand that thorugh these processes including patient
assessment, diagnosis, planning, evaluation and evaluation are the steps that helps the
professionals to understand the effectiveness of the care process (Sarfati et al., 2019).
The primary aim of this paper is to identify one such critical healthcare condition in the
healthcare facilities such as medication error and then develop a plan or proposal for the decision
making and problem solving in relation to this selected health care issue. This paper further
would describe problem solving and critical thinking abilities and then with the help of these
would identify the reason of medication error as the critical condition. Further, with the
development of learning objectives, the goals in this healthcare complication would be discussed.

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Finally, with the discussion of the latest and current protocol of the patient guidelines, the patient
would be asked to develop critical conditions so that they could acquire the latest research-based
evidences.
Problem solving and critical thinking in nursing
Problem solving is an important attribute of an individual that help them to understand
the importance of healthcare process and then through the help of their effective decision making
abilities, they overcome critical healthcare conditions in the process. as per Cloete (2016), the
problem solving skill or attribute is comprising of six guided steps such as the identification of
the problem, analyzing the proper an effective solutions, evaluating the chances of alternative
options and then deciding or finalizing one solution to overcome the critical condition and
finally, implementing the solution to the critical condition, so that they could overcome the
critical condition effectively (Karimi et al., 2016). Therefore, the problem solving ability is a
systematic and critical aspect that would help the professionals to be effective for the severity of
problems that are affecting the process.
However, to determine the severity of the critical condition and then prioritize them to
react upon, is achieved through the application of critical thinking and the patient should be
provided with effective care in such condition so that the critical thinking abilities of the nursing
professionals could help them. As per Karimi et al. (2019), critical thinking abilities are few of
the skills of the nursing professionals that is developed through their traits and then it could help
them to overcome their critical health conditions. Further, critical thinking also help them to
understand the safer nursing practices that would help them to develop quality of care and

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promote systematic and logistic manner of care process for the development of effective care
process (Cloete, 2016).
Medication error and its significance in Australian healthcare
As per the World Health Organisation (2019) mentions medication error as the
complication due to which the patients are provided with wrong medication or the wrong dosage
of medication and affects their effective care. These events are preventable situations as it occurs
due to the dosage calculation, or medication administration of the nursing professionals that are
assigned to provide the patient with critical care. These are the healthcare conditions that arise
due to the professional inability of the nursing professionals and/or due to their inability to
perform effective medication administration or labeling, packaging, dispensing distributing and
finally patient administering. Further, they also lack to provide the patient with patient education
and affect their ability to monitor or use these guidelines to help the patient. In this critical age of
globalization, there are multiple drives and programs that has been developed by the world
health organisation and the Australian healthcare system so that the patients could be provided
with 50% less or reduced risk of critical health complications. The medication error that costs the
world by US$42 billion annually requires the attention of the healthcare facilities so that the rate
of such critical condition could be reduced. As per Ogunleye et al. (2016), the rate of medication
error is Australia is between 2% to 3% of the total Australian population admission in the
healthcare facilities and as per this data, more than 230000 hospital admissions occur due to the
complication of hospital administration (Fanning, Jones & Manias, 2016). These medication
error related complication costs the Australian healthcare system by $1.2 billion AUD and these
costs could be prevented with critical thinking and problem solving related aspects. Therefore, it
is important to develop critical thinking abilities and problem solving skills in the nursing