Medication Error in Acute Hospital Setting Assignment 2022

Running head: MEDICATION ERROR IN ACUTE HOSPITAL SETTING
MEDICATION ERROR IN ACUTE HOSPITAL SETTING
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MEDICATION ERROR IN ACUTE HOSPITAL SETTING
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Introduction:
Medication error is demarcated as an error conducted by nurse the other health care staff
in the hospital setting due to the prescription of the wrong medicine (Walsh et al., 2017). The
nurse are required to adapt to the changes as per the requirement of health care. With emergence
of new issues, technologies and policies by the government, there is the need for improvement of
health quality. It implies, measuring, observing and examining the system, policies and process
with objective to implement new strategies to improve the outcome (Feleke, Mulatu & Yesmaw,
2015). Medication error takes place when health care professional prescribe medicine and nurses
acknowledge it by paper drug charts. The major reason is that nurse are unable to read it and
does not give time to cross check the drugs by consulting registered nurse. It rely on their work
load, pressure, anxiety, communication gap and lack of experience. Further, medication error can
also occur when nurse fails to ask about drug allergic history from the patient or function without
following seven rights of medication (Samsiah et al., 2016).
The medication error by the clinical might lead to disability, other pernicious illness or
may lead to death also. In Australia, the death rate of the population due to medication error
conducted by the nurses is around 18000 (Roughead, Semple & Rosenfeld, 2016). Apart from
these, out of the total population, around 50,000 of the total population have become disabled
due to the medication error. According to Tong et al., (2017), around 554 number of medication
errors were observed in the time period of 4 months, that is around 1.7 errors is observed per day
per patient. Hence to reduce the number of death and other disability, the bar-coded medication
administration should be implemented. Bar-coded medication administration is used to minimize
human error which occurs during the prescribing of the medication, evaluating the patient, not
being conscious enough in acknowledging the medicine and many other at acute hospital settings

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(Larson & Lo, 2019). Its Implementation is necessary in the acute hospital settings, as it helps in
the improvement of the quality care of the patient by prescribing appropriate medication, which
will help in fast recovery of the patient.
The medication error is defined as the preventable error in the hospital settings which
may lead to death and other adverse effect, which can be reduced by the lasted technologies. In
order to implement the change in the acute hospital setting, a change model is implemented
(Dyab et al., 2018). A change model named as Kurt Lewin change model developed by Kurt
Lewin, which helps in understanding the process of change in the organization. The model
consists of three main steps which include, unfreezing, changing and refreezing (Teguh et al.,
2019).
The 1st step of the Lewin Change model is unfreezing. Before implementing any change,
it is important to create an awareness regarding the importance or effectiveness of the change. If
this step of the freezing is skipped before the implementation, there are chances that the some of
the members of the organization will resist the change (Cummings, Bridgman, & Brown, 2016).
The awareness among the members of the organization can be created by illuminating the issue
with the older system and its negative impact on the organization. It is important to state the
effectiveness of the new system and how it may help to avoid health complications. In the acute
healthcare setting, the nurse and the other health care providers can work consciously by
addressing medication error, its negative impact on the quality care of the acute patients. After
that they should be given education about the importance of the bar-coded medication
administration, and how it may help in reducing the medication error (Angert et al., 2018).
Second step of the Lewin Change model is changing. It is the main step of the model
where the change is actually implemented. The members of the organization at this step are