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Medication Safety As a Professional Issue in Nursing

   

Added on  2019-10-31

11 Pages2872 Words180 Views
Medication Safety 1MEDICATION SAFETY AS A PROFESSIONAL ISSUE IN NURSINGStudent Name:Course:Professor:University:Date:

Medication Safety 2IntroductionMedication safety refers to the practice of giving patients the right medication, in the right doses, and at the right times (Cima and Clarke 2012). It is an important professional issue for nurses since they are the healthcare workers who do actual drug administration. The physicians mainly prescribe medication while the pharmacists receive, store, and dispense medications. Medication safety becomes an issue in nursing when it is done in the wrong way thus constituting medical error. Agyemang and While (2010) define medical error as any avoidable events that may lead to inappropriate use of medication with or without resultant harm to the patient while the medication process is in the control of the patient, a consumer, or a healthcare professional. Medication error can occur at any point in the healthcare chain includingprescription, order communication, labeling, packaging, dispensing, administration, monitoring, and use. As for nurses, special focus is on administration. However, nurses are also involved in prescription, order communication, and monitoring. The importance of drug medication errors topatients, healthcare personnel, health institutions, and the economy cannot be understated. This paper is an in-depth discussion of medication safety and medication errors; it also recommends various ways in which nurses can enhance medication safety and avoid medication errors. Significance of Medication Safety to Nursing McBride-Henry and Foureur (2005) state that nurses are the healthcare personnel who take most responsibility for medication errors and their impacts. Nurses are involved in the majority of the activities that constitute the medication chain (Bull et al. 2017). Nurses are often involved in process of prescription either directly by prescribing drugs like analgesics in the absence of physicians or indirectly by helping the physician to decide the medication given to a

Medication Safety 3patient. Moreover, nurses are heavily involved in the communication and drug dispensing processes that follow. Nurses are also the chief drug administrators. Although systemic factors play a great role, nurses are certainly the most important cadre of healthcare professionals when one thinks of medication safety (Brady et al. 2009). It is for this reason that medication safety is an important issue for the nursing profession. Lounsbury (2009) reports that the greatest percentage of medication errors occur at the level of nursing activities. The author states that 39% of all medication errors are committed by physicians. However, nurses have an opportunity to identify and correct these errors at the levels of medication dispensation and administration (Lounsbury 2009). Additionally, nurses are the healthcare personnel who are closest to patients. As such, the nurses can identify the consequences of medication error on patients earlier and report them appropriately. These tend toincrease the responsibilities of nursing in preventing and limiting the consequences of medication error. Furthermore, as the primary preventers of medication error, it is the role of nurses to report confirmed or suspected cases of the same (Lounsbury 2009). Although all healthcare workers should be involved in proactive identification and management of medical errors, the greatest responsibility is upon nurses hence the significance of medication safety as a professional issue in nursing. Actually, monitoring patients for response or reactions to drugs is part of holistic patient care and is thus a direct responsibility of nurses. In a review of relevant literature, Durham (2015) also found out that nurses have more responsibility when it comes to medication safety compared to any other cadre of healthcare workers. She says that individual factors leading to medication error are unpredictable and unintentional. She also enumerates various causes of medication error among nurses. These

Medication Safety 4include recognition and perceptual factors both for drugs and patients; reporting errors; and inadequate utilization of pharmacology knowledge.The incidence of medication errors also affects individual nurses adversely and has majorimplications for the nursing profession. Individual nurses involved in the medication error often experience emotional plight as they have to put up with a feeling of shame, guilt, disappointment, and self-doubt (Schelbred and Nord 2007). Ethically, the nurses might find it difficult to report an error committed by themselves or their close associates; they also have difficulties in explaining this to the patients. Additionally, these nurses stand a risk of facing litigation or revocation of their licenses. Such incidences also derail the nurse’s professional development and their effectiveness at their work; in fact, some may be forced to seek a break to deal with the resultant emotional instability (Schelbred and Nord 2007). The health institution and the entire nursing profession are also affected adversely. The health institutions might have to incur significant costs in either settling damages or paying for legal counsel on behalf of their employees (Hughes, 2008). In addition, the incidence of medical errors often leads to unethical practices by many members of the profession in an attempt to cover up. These unethical practices and the resultant plight of the patient often lead to a loss of a health institution’s good reputation hence a decrease in their competitive edge. Moreover, the cumulative effects of medication errors can cost a health institution their accreditation. The nurseleadership in the affected health institution also ends up spending a lot of time considering the case, conducting the investigation, and instilling disciplinary measures for the affected individuals at the expense of patient care.

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