Exploring Medication Errors: Causes, Categories, and Prevention in Law

This essay defines medication errors and categorizes them based on their nature, including wrong time, dose, and omission errors. It explores the various reasons for these errors, such as medical abbreviations, poor communication, and look-alike drug names, further categorizing contributing factors related to patients, healthcare professionals, tasks, and the work environment. The essay then lists several medication error prevention strategies for pharmacy technicians, emphasizing learning medication regulations, using drug guides, proper documentation, and following the five rights of medication administration. Finally, it recounts a real-world medication error resulting in patient death due to a new nurse's lack of experience, highlighting the critical need for robust prevention strategies. This resource is available on Desklib, a platform offering study tools and solved assignments for students.

LAW AND ETHICS 1
Law and Ethics
Student’s Name
Institution Affiliate
Date

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What is a medication error, and how are these errors categorized?
The failure in the treatment procedure that results in harm to the particular patient is the
medication error. The medication errors are many, and each is categorized based on the nature of
the particular error (Roughead, Semple & Rosenfeld, 2016). Thus the critical examples of
medication errors include, wrong time, prescribing, dose , omission error, drug preparation error,
and dosage form, among others. However, the broad categories of medication errors include
knowledge-based errors, memory based errors, action-based errors, and rule-based errors.
Describe the various reasons errors occur.
According to Nanji et al. (2016), medication errors occur as a result of varying reasons.
The significant reasons for the medication errors include;
 Medical abbreviations
 Poor communication with the doctors
 Medications that look alike as well as names of drugs that sound alike.
 Lack of proper communication between a particular individual and his or her doctor
Apart from the above mentioned aspects that result in medication errors, there are also other
factors, and they are classified into a variety of categories as indicated below;
Factors Associated with Patients
 Complex clinical case
 Characteristics of the patients, such as language barriers, literacy, and personality.
Health Care Professionals Factors
 Insufficient knowledge of the patient
 Lack of communication between a health care professional as well as with patients
 Insufficient therapeutic training

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 Inadequate risk perception
 Emotional and physical health issues
Factors Associated with Tasks
 Monitoring of the patients
 Systems that are repetitive for authorization, processing, and processing
Primary-secondary care interface
 Few justifications of the secondary care recommendations
 Poor communication with the secondary care
The work Environment Factors
 Lack of adequate resources
 Problems with the physical environment
 Workload and time pressures
 Distractions and Interruptions
 Inadequate standardized procedures and protocols.
Most of the new nurses often make medication errors because of inadequate experience,
critical reasoning skills, and auditory as well as visual distractions, among others.
3. List medication error prevention strategies you as a pharmacy technician can use.
To prevent the medication errors, as a pharmacy technician, the key strategies that can be used
include;

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Learning the medication regulation, guidelines as well as administration of policies of
the institution to help you familiarize yourself with practices on medication documentation,
transcription, ordering as well as administration of policies (Antony et al., 2019). The other
strategy entails the use of drug guide available all the time. As a pharmacy technician, you
should ensure that you have documented everything by a proper recording of administered
medication, clear documentation, and appropriate labeling. The absence of proper documentation
often results in medication errors. Finally, the other strategy that can be used is to follow the five
rights of medication administration and transcription. It is of significance that there is a correct
prescription of medication for the right patient in the correct dosage (Schiff et al., 2015).
Find a recent medication error and describe the situation and outcome.
In one of the healthcare institutions, a new nurse had just reported to work and was
assigned the task of prescribing drugs to a particular patient. Due to the lack of critical reasoning
skills as well as experience, she gave a wrong dose to the patient. The patient ended up dying due
to the wrong dose prescribed to her.
References

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Antony, J., Forthun, S., Trakulsunti, Y., Farrington, T., McFarlane, J., Brennan, A., & Dempsey,
M. (2019). An Exploratory Study into the use of Lean Six Sigma to Reduce Medication
Errors in the Norwegian Public Healthcare Context. Leadership in Health Services.
Nanji, K. C., Patel, A., Shaikh, S., Seger, D. L., & Bates, D. W. (2016). Evaluation of
perioperative medication errors and adverse drug events. Anesthesiology: The Journal of
the American Society of Anesthesiologists, 124(1), 25-34.
Roughead, E. E., Semple, S. J., & Rosenfeld, E. (2016). The extent of medication errors and
adverse drug reactions throughout the patient journey in acute care in
Australia. International journal of evidence-based healthcare, 14(3-4), 113-122.
Schiff, G. D., Amato, M. G., Eguale, T., Boehne, J. J., Wright, A., Koppel, R., ... & Bates, D. W.
(2015). Computerised physician order entry-related medication errors: analysis of
reported errors and vulnerability testing of current systems. BMJ Qual Saf, 24(4), 264-
271.