Medication Error: Impacts on Nursing Practice and Patient Safety

Running head: MEDICATION ERROR
MEDICATION ERROR
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MEDICATION ERROR
Introduction:
Medication error is considered as one of the biggest concern of the present day healthcare
system. Due to its varied negative effects, the government of healthcare is trying its best to
mitigate the problem in different ways. Medication error is the preventable event that has the
potential to cause inappropriate medication administration by healthcare professionals. This
results in harm to the patients to an extent that may threaten their lives as well as result in their
suffering to large degree (Cloete, 2015). Therefore, most of the organizations are trying their best
to adopt strategies that help them to overcome the issues. The thesis statement is that
“medication error has potential negative effects on both nursing profession and safety of patients
and therefore strategies need to be taken to prevent the occurrence of such issues in the
future.”This assignment will mainly help to shed light on the issue along with its impacts on both
patients and professionals. Strategies to mitigate the issues will also be discussed.
Define the professional issue.
Medication error can be defined as the failure in the treatment failure procedure
conducted by healthcare professionals that has the potential to cause harm in patients. Although
medicines are mainly products that prevent or care various kinds of disorders, they also have the
potential to cause harmful reactions if not used correctly. Different types of medication errors
may take place where the most common form of error reported by FDA is improper dose of
medicine (Hayes et al., 2015). This form of error is common in 41% of the total reported
medication error cases. Moreover, giving the wrong drug or using an improper route of
administration is also other causes of medication errors that accounts for about 16% of the errors
(Lan et al., 2014). Several other causes of medication error may result from inaccurate recording

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and transcribing orders and due to unclear and erroneous labelling of drugs. Besides,
misidentification of the client by the healthcare professionals or incomplete deliveries of drugs
are also of the other types of medication errors. Moreover, verification errors, having inaccurate
knowledge base and even time and performance pressure are also of the other reasons. They have
severe negative health outcomes of patients resulting in very poor quality of lives (Elliot et al.,
2016).
Discuss the significance of your chosen professional issue to nursing.
Researchers are of the opinion that healthcare is always conducted under stressful
situations in a high consequence system where there is an increased potential for the occurrence
of error. The level of professional as well as personal responsibilities of the healthcare
professional for patient care along with the expectations surrounding these responsibilities also
carry a certain weight and burden. Therefore, medication errors are incomplete conflicts with the
goals of alleviating the suffering of service users (Hayes et al., 2015). Interviews conducted of
experienced nurses have revealed that in most healthcare centres, there is a culture of blame and
silence that is related to error. The main consequence of this care is culture results in under-
reporting of such error events to the authority that often accompanies severe self-blame among
the healthcare professionals (Lane et al., 2014). This culture has also been seen to hinder
different types of improvements in practices as well as systems. Severe other emotional impacts
are also seen to be associated with such form medication error events. They suffer from various
forms of doubt and self blame themselves that make them not only anxious but also depressed.
Nurses have also stated to suffer from loss of sleep for consecutive number of days after the
occurrence of such events (Harris et al., 2014). Moreover, many of the nurses are also seen to
lack confidence in their job that affect their practices in various ways. They tend to lack the

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confidence in their approach towards their patients and this lack of confidence is reflected in
their body language (Vaisamoradi et al., 2014). This affects the therapeutic relationship between
the patients and the nurses. Moreover feeling of anxiety, guilt and remorse are also feelings that
remain associated with them. On the other hand, providers are seen to suffer from various types
of legal obligations as well. Many of the organisations expose the nursing professionals to legal
obligations. In many cases, the patients and their families also take such actions. All these
actions have a huge impact on the career of the nurses. Either they tend to leave the job out of
shame or are even their license gets cancelled where sever impacts take place on the patents
(Karavasiliadou & Athanouski, 2014). Researchers conducted with nursing professionals had
stated that guilt and shame are the most common feelings that they go through when such
mistakes are made by them. About twenty percent of the professionals who have conducted the
disorder had stated that they had gone through phases when they cannot gain back their self-
confidence of practicing healthcare and were seen to question their own skills and professional
competence (Ulas et al., 2015). Another important feeling that was also marked was that the
nursing professionals felt angered towards their team as a whole. However, eighty percent of the
interviewees had clearly stated that the adverse events had stayed back in their memories as a
fixed event. Nurses have stated that “heart racing, dry mouth, tunnel vision as you look again at
the vial in your hand and realization kicks in – you’ve just pushed 5mg of Midazolam IV instead
of Metoclopromide” (Lan et al., 2014). Many of the nurses do not report these incidents out of
fear stating that their career may be destroyed. They also state that too harsh punishments are
given for medication errors for which the culture of non-reporting by the other nurses have come
up (Alsweed et al., 2014). Therefore, healthcare organizations should be encouraged to be