Nurse and Medication Safety

Nurse and Medication Safety
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Introduction:
Medication errors are the second most incidents evident in the Australian hospitals (Johnson
et al. 2017). 18 % medication errors are reported in the Australian hospitals. Prescription and
medicine order errors occur in approximately 5 – 11 % cases. Procedural occur in
approximately 4 – 5 % cases. Approximately 5 – 8 % and 15 – 18 % clinical errors occur in
individual patient medicine and ward medicine respectively (Roughead et al. 2016).
Medication errors impact outcome of the patient with merely 4 – 21 % patients achieve
necessary outcome as a result of medication errors. It also produces financial burden with
approximately $ 6 billion loss. Moreover, inappropriate use medicines also cost
approximately $ 380 million costs (NSW, 2013). Medication errors increase the stay of
patient in the hospital by at least two days. Transition of care is mainly responsible for the
medication errors. Most of the medication errors occur during intravenous administration of
the medications (Johnson et al. 2017). Australian research on medication charts reported that
at least one medicine is omitted from the medication chart for every three admitted patients
(Johnson et al. 2017). It is necessary to understand the medication use process for effective
medication administration and for avoiding medication errors. Stages in medication use
process include prescribing, transcribing, dispensing, administration and monitoring stage. It
is necessary to perform medication-error analysis to prevent medication errors (TGA, 2018).
Hence, in this report medication-error analysis is performed by considering factors affecting
medication errors and strategies to prevent medication errors.
Discussion:
Nursing staff: Nursing staff is one of the important systems factors responsible for the
medication errors. Hours of nursing care and nurse’s skill mix affects medication errors. It is
evident that when the doses numbers are in denominator; medication errors due to nursing
staff are more in medical-surgical and obstetric departments. When patient’s duration of stay
in the hospital is denominator; medication errors are more in Intensive Care Units (ICUs). It
is evident that with increase in RN skill mix; there is decrease in 80 % medication errors
(Atik, 2013). It is evident that; with decrease in the working hours for nurses resulted in
approximately 30 % decrease in the medication error. Inadequate number of nurses and heavy
workloads on the nurses are also responsible for the medical errors. It is evident that nurse’s
workload with more than 12 hours lead to increased medication errors by three times
(Roughead et al. 2016; Wheeler et al. 2018).
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