Nursing Errors and Patient Safety
Added on 2020-05-08
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Running head: MEDICATION ERROR AS SAFETY INDICATOR OF HEALTHMEDICATION ERROR AS SAFETY INDICATOR OF HEALTHName of the student:Name of the university:Author note:
1MEDICATION ERROR AS SAFETY INDICATOR OF HEALTHIntroduction:Patient safety is the main motto of all healthcare centers. However the same remains themost prominent issue in health policy and public debate. Different types of factors becomeresponsible for adverse patient outcomes when they are not followed properly (Nezamodini et al.2016). Different types of falls, wrong site surgery, drug transfusion reaction, post operativesepsis, development of pressure ulcer, and wound infection are some of the factors. Moreovercatheter related infections, preventable deaths due to inappropriate caring, skin tears, handhygiene compliance are also some others. However among the factors, the most importantconcern which had been noted in most of the healthcare centers of the nation is medication errors(Dolansky et al. 2013). Medication errors have various types of negative outcomes which notonly affect the reputation of the hospitals and the career of the nurse but can lead to preventablepatient deaths and poor quality lives of patients. In the present working center, medication errorhas been identified as the main cause of concern for the organization. It is thereby used as anindicator which can be used to analyze the intensity of the patient safety adherence rulesfollowed by healthcare professionals (Vaismoradi et al. 2015). This would be followed by aproper improvement plan for the development of the culture of maintenance of medicationadministration safety. An evaluation plan should also be proposed to monitor the change andimprovement made by the healthcare professionals in their practices and efforts made by theorganization for the development of patient safety after changes. All these would ensuredevelopment of the culture of safety in the healthcare center ensuring the best care for patients.
2MEDICATION ERROR AS SAFETY INDICATOR OF HEALTHMedication administration: (Indicator of patient safety)Medication administration is the complex as well as a multistep process which involves alarge number of activities. It encompasses prescribing, transcribing as well as dispensing andadministering drugs and at the same time monitoring the patient response to ensure safety of thepatients (Alenius and Graf, 2016). In any step, an error may take place which may affect theentire course of medication administration severely compromising the patient health. In busyshifts nowadays, different nurses are found in hurry as they have to handle multiple patients atthe same time. Often their multitasking can lead to severe issues when they either miss outmedication or administer wrong medication or follows improper procedures for medication.There has been also reported incidents like many of medication error occur at the prescribingstate and also some are intercepted by pharmacists and other staffs beside nurses as well (Jun andLee 2014). Administration errors are accounting for about 26 to 2% among different types ofmedication errors and these errors are seen to be conducted mostly by the nurses as they are theones who are responsible for providing medication to patients. Therefore mostly the nursesshould be most careful among the different healthcare professionals. Literature review:Often large numbers of factors are responsible for the occurrence of the medicationerrors. One of the most important factors which are identified is inappropriate or incompletepatient information. Often nurses do not complete the patient information chart or the medicalhistory of the patients is not taken completely (Lane et al. 2014). As a result, importantinformation gets missed out which have significant effect on the health of the patient. A patients’name, age, birthday, allergies, weight, current labs results, vital signs and others are very
3MEDICATION ERROR AS SAFETY INDICATOR OF HEALTHimportant as they might alter the medication procedure of the patients. When such informationgoes undocumented, it may harm the patients. Recent researchers are of the opinion that properbarcode scanning of the patient’s armbands help in patient’s identity and at the same time canconfirm the reduction of the medication error related to patent information. However, severalissues regarding barcode scanning has been noted as it increase medication administration times.Moreover the system is also not completely fail proof (Hwang and Park 2014).Another factor that is also observed by researchers to cause medication errors areinaccurate drug information. Often accurate and current drug information is not advisable tocaregivers or they do not develop their skills and knowledge to follow current information aboutdrugs. This information can come from protocols, text references, order sets, medicationadministrations records and patient profiles (Karavasiliadou et al. 2014). Moreover computerizeddrug information systems are also important to follow properly. Researchers are of the opinionthat nurses need to show patience and proper concentration while handling drugs so that they canavoid wring administration of drugs thereby preventing adverse events (Van Boggaert et al.2014).Another issue that leads to medication errors is inadequate communication.Miscommunication among the physicians, nurses and pharmacists often act as barriers ineffective drug information availability and therefore this should be verified. Impropercommunication mainly rises from power struggle, excessive burden from over work, lack ofsituation awareness and other all lead to improper information sharing for which ultimately thepatients’ lives are compromised (Scott and Henneman 2017). Many researchers are of theopinion that in such cases SBAR method helps in minting patient safety by proper jotting down
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