Position Paper: Medication Error

Running head: POSITION PAPER
Position Paper: Medication error
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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POSITION PAPER
Introduction
Medication errors not only cause injury to the patients but prove to be extremely
costly to the healthcare system. Although Canada does not have a detailed statistics over
medication errors, thorough exploration of the US data suggest that Canada experiences 700
deaths per year due to medication error (Institute of Safe Medication Practices Canada,
2018).
Background of the topic
Medication error is one of the single most avoidable causes behind the patient harm
(Ashcroft et al., 2015). Medicines or the drugs are frequently used by the healthcare
professionals as an effective clinical intervention in healthcare. Medication errors mainly
occur in any of the three steps of medication use starting from medication prescribing,
medicine dispensing and administration of the medicine (Berdot et al., 2012).
Figure: Steps of medication administration

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POSITION PAPER
(Source: Karavasiliadou & Athanasakis, 2014)
According to the reports published by Feleke et al. (2015), one of the most common
type of medication error arise from medication administration which lead to an increase in the
patient mortality and morbidity due to adverse drug reaction. Moreover, medication error
causes overall increase in the cost of care and length of hospital stay (Feleke et al., 2015).
According to the reports published on CBC news (2013) highlighted that in the hospitals in
Ontario, 36 patients suffered from severe adverse affects from medication error and of them
10 are fatal. The main error included that the patients were either the victim of drug overdose
in a single go or in a periodic manner. These medication errors jeopardized the health of the
patients while increasing they stay in hospital. Apart from the administration errors, other
form of medication errors common in Canada is prescribing error (CBC News, 2013).
Thesis statement
Medication errors increases the overall cost of care however, it is preventable via
proper application of technology and training of the nursing professionals
Counter argument
As per the reports published by the Cheragi et al. (2013), errors in medication can
occur from all the members of the health care system however in nursing profession,
medication errors are common. The main reason behind this is, nurses execute a significant
number of the medical orders and spend at least 50% of their duty time in the hospital unit,
administering medicines to the patients (Cheragi et al., 2013). Sears, O'Brien-Pallas, Stevens
and Murphy (2013) is of the opinion that during this 50% of the timeframe, nurses can
administer not less than 50 different medications and this statistics increase the risk of
committing administration error. A pan Canadian study conducted by Sears, O'Brien-Pallas,
Stevens and Murphy (2013) represented that medication error are high in the paediatric unit.

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POSITION PAPER
In paediatrics, the children are mostly treated as therapeutic orphan as the majority of the
formulation are based in adult requirements. This lack of proper prescribing and lack of
standardised yet easy-to-use medication delivery system increase chances of medication
errors.
Figure: Other factors contributing to medication errors
(Source: Cloete, 2015)
Medication errors have negative impact on the healthcare system and are regarded as
an important cause behind the patient’s mortality and morbidity. Although only 10% of the
medication errors result in the generation of adverse disease outcomes, these errors have
significant negative implications over the patients, their family members and the health care
providers. Keers et al. (2013) highlighted that at least 1/5th of the medication errors occurs in
ICU and majority of these are life threatening and increases the overall cost of health care as