Preventing Medication Errors: Utilizing Evidence-Based Practice

Running head: MEDICATION ERROR
MEDICATION ERROR
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Introduction:
Evidence based practice (EBP) is the approach to identify best practice evidence that
provides optimal care to patient and combine the evidence with clinical skills and patient values
to deliver care. The main purpose of the paper is to look into the issue of medication errors and
use the steps of the EBP process to identify the strong evidence that can prevent medication
errors (DiCenso, Guyatt & Ciliska, 2014). Medication error can be defined as the preventable
events that have the capability of causing or leading to inappropriate medication use affecting the
health of the patients (Salmasi et al., 2015). Occurrence of these events may be due to
professional practices or healthcare products, different types of procedures as well as systems
that might include improper prescribing, order communication as well as product labeling. The
paper looks at the consequence of medication errors and ways to prevent it in practice setting
using the EBP process.
Rational for medication error as a practice issue:
The medication errors have threatening effects on the health of the patient and the family
members. It results in preventable deaths, long stays in the hospitals, readmissions of the
patients, poor quality health of the patient and suffering. It also leads to loss of trust and respect
among the healthcare members and the patients that also affect the reputation of the healthcare
sectors and overflow of healthcare resources. Nanji et al. (2016) had stated that it also has
negative impacts on the professionals where they suffer from feelings of guilt and fear about the
events. They fear of losing their license that would affect their career. They also feel guilty of
making the patients suffer more that affect their morale as well as their self-confidence. They get

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involved in different types of legal obligations that affect the career of the professionals and the
brand reputation of the healthcare center (Parry, Barribal & While, 2015).
Preventing medication errors following the steps of the EBP process:
To prevent medication errors and promote patient safety, identifying the best
interventions that can prevent medication is critical. The six steps of the EBP process can guide
in identifying the best evidence to prevent medication errors. These are as follows:
1. Development of clinical question:
The first step a to search for strongest evidence related to practice issue according to the EBP
process is to frame a clinically guiding research question that can help to retrieve relevant
research literatures on the topic. PICO question can provide a pathway to search for relevant
evidence (Hall & Roussel, 2016). The PICO question related to medication error prevention
includes the following:
Is computerized medication order entry (intervention) effective in preventing medication
errors (outcome) in medicine ward (population)?
2. Retrieving evidence from the right source:
Several medical and health care databases like Medline, CINAHL and PubMed can help to
search for best evidence that prevent medication errors in clinical setting. Use of keywords from
the clinical question helps to proceed with the search for relevant research literatures (Hall &
Roussel, 2016). The search terms that can be used for the above clinical question includes
computerized medication order entry, medication errors or medicine, medication error prevention
and reducing medication errors. The search term helped to retrieve various interventions that has
been implemented to reduce medication errors.