CNA346 Reflective Essay: Medication Management Strategies for Nurses

This essay addresses the challenges faced by new graduate nurses in medication management and proposes strategies for improvement. It highlights the importance of national safety and quality standards, critical thinking, observation, and organizational policies. The action plan includes building critical thinking skills, staying observant, understanding organizational policies, and aiming for zero medication errors. Reflection on the learning process and its impact on patient care emphasizes the need to overcome fear and anxiety, enhance pharmaceutical knowledge, and practice thoughtfully and ethically. The essay concludes that implementing these strategies can decrease medication errors and improve patient safety, offering a valuable resource for nursing students and new graduates. Desklib provides access to this and other solved assignments.

Running Head: Medication Management 0
Medication Management
Essay
Student Name:
1/9/2019

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Introduction:
This essay aims to describe the challenges faced by a new graduate nurse. This essay aims to
develop strategies that will help in overcoming one such challenge of medication
management. A newly graduate nurse faces many challenges thus; this essay includes the
action plan to accomplish those challenges faced by the nurses while clinical practice. It also
includes reflection that gives the idea of learning and describing its impact on patient care
(NurseJournal, 2018).
Learning need:
Nursing means the person who takes cares for the sick person, a person with licensed health
care profession who practice independently or under the supervision of a physician, surgeon
or dentist. In addition, a nurse is the person who is skilled in encouraging and maintaining
health. For a new graduate nurse, there are so many challenges that a new nurse is going to
face such as, medical administration (NurseJournal, 2018).
The significance of harmless treatment organization is seen in the Australian Commission on
Safety and Quality in Health Care (ACSQHC) standard four, which commits the safety of the
treatment as a national security and worth of health provision standards (NSQHS, 2017). The
Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (the commission) aims to
support a health system that is conversant, sustained and organised to deliver safe and high
quality health care, which provide better experiences for patients and clients, better health
results for the public, upgraded efficiency and better maintenance. The commission develops
and supports national safety and clinical standards, expressing and implementing national
authorizationpolicies; and developing national health associated data collections.
The Commission also works on reducing unjustified differences in practice and outcomes for
an individual person and publics, and taking responsibility of the nation coordinating with its

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action to address healthcare related to contagions infection and anti-microbial resistance
(Smith & Liehr, Patricia R., 2013). This commission have produced a collection of ten
standards that are used to measure the worth of facilities provided in the health care. The
significance of the standards cannot be expressed as these standards assist towards supporting
and directing the maintenance of proficiency level of nursing practice clinically. Therefore, it
is essential to cultivate an action plan that can be easily adopted by the medical practisers to
decrease treatment faults in the future (Stratis Health, 2019).
The other most vital thing that happens is medication faults and this can affect patient’s
health that may further lead to deregistration and penalizing actions. The standards are based
on the evidences and strategies that aim in improvement of clinical practice (Moyle, 2018).
Hence, these standards are used as an agenda to verify the quality of my own performance in
the nursing field. This practice will help in maintaining the quality of my medication training
with the assistance of autonomy and encouraging my knowledge and skills to provide proof
based practice as its establishment.
The University has supported me by providing clinical experience and the transition from
being a student to a graduate registered nurse faces many challenges in the clinical practice
(University, 2017). Clinical practice is related to capability, especially with respect to taking
decision or thinking critically in any situation. With increase in number of patients, with
multifarious medical conditions of the patients or multiple disorders in a patient and lack of
access to medical experts or mentors are the problems that a graduate nurse faces being a
staff nurse and at that moment, a nurse should know to think critically and provide the type of
medication a patient needs. With better knowledge skills or thinking capability, nursing a
patient has better result (NSQHS, 2017). Hence, developing the skill of applying knowledge
and taking spontaneous decision or thinking critically makes a nurse to work independently
and decrease the potential to harm a patient.

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In addition, the other significant challenge of a student nurse is that a mentor or preceptor
always supervises them. Preceptor is legal accountant of all the medication that I administer.
The preceptor is very helpful to us; he/she guide us with any problems or doubts regarding
medicines or in the medication processes (L.Enns & V.Sawatzky, 2009). However, after
becoming into a registered nurse a preceptor will not be accessible for supervision. This
means that pharmaceutical information is very essential for any kind of emergency in future
to work independently and decrease the health risk of a patient. Thus, unsupervised
medication delivery is a huge challenge for the new graduate nurse.
Creating strategies is a good way to deal with all the challenges faced by a new graduate
nurse ((NMBA), 2017). A newly graduate nurse may face anxiety issues while handling
increasing number of patients and can get confuse or be stressed with the medication.
Sometimes being a nurse is so stressful that it may lead to depression and creating a harmful
impact on the medication provided to the patient.
Action Plan:
The first strategy is to use national safety and quality in medication services provided for the
safety of the patient as well as for self-dependency. This action plan here aims that a nurse
should practice in the safe environment and should be ready for every challenge that will
occur in future (Smith & Liehr, Patricia R., 2013).

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The second strategy of this action plan aims to build critical thinking process in any situation
(University, 2017). This can be done by analysing clinical experts such as working under a
physician or surgeon and integrating with other clinical experts to get a better result of
systematic research and practice. To build strong critical thinking process, as a newly
graduate nurse i have to update the knowledge of pharmaceutics and should have good
practice of right medication treatment so that in future any medication error may not happen
and risk a patient’s health. According to the value statement six, a nurse is expected to "value
a culture of safety "and preserve the ability in clinical training (NAMBA, 2008). This further
includes, reading online journal guide of medical specialties (MIMS). The MIMS provides
comprehensive explanation on the measures and challenges of numerous products, and thus,
is perfect for looking on an explanation of unidentified medications (O Day & Snowden,
2016).
The third strategy is to be observant. To achieve this aim, effective medication management
can be applied by appropriately recognizing the patient and the medication required to the
patient (EMAP, 2012). This can also be achieved by observing the medical expertise and
amending on the medication provided to the patient. With regular practice and good
knowledge of pharmaceutics, a nurse can deal with any kind of medical emergency in future
(Stratis Health, 2019). Being observant, means this will assist to recognize the differences in
the medication plan. According to NSQHSS Standard five and six, it discusses about the
recognition and method of matching the medication during clinical practice.

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The fourth strategy is to be aware of policymaking procedures by the organization. This
strategy can be achieved by application of course during emergencies this will result in
decrease of medication faults. According to statement two, it states that nurses are expected
to practice in agreement with the ethics of wider health system. Similarly, statement three
states that a nurse is expected to practice in agreement relevant to law of the organization
(NAMBA, 2016).
The final strategy is to achieve no medical faults by me. This is the most important
challenges faced by the most newly graduated nurse (NurseJournal, 2018). Most of the newly
graduated nurses make common mistakes and these are medication fault includes stress,
improper time management, lack of clinical knowledge, and be deficient in assimilating
patients. Thus, it is essential to create strategies that deals with faults caused due to human
factors.
Reflection:
The strategies promote safe medication and to handle the pressure as a newly graduate nurse.
The strategies aim for promotion to achieve positive medication results and quality of
services. Medication faults can lead to harm a patient’s health. These strategies insure the
quality medication delivered to a patient (Minuz & P Velo , 2009). As a newly graduate
nurse, I have to go through the challenges and apply on action plan. The most important
challenge for me is to overcome my fear and anxiety in any situation. Stress can bring
negative impact on my performance as well as it can also harm a patient. In addition,
knowledge of pharmaceutics is very important to handle any situation without any expertise
around and apply the medication required to the patient. Hence, it is essential to practice
thoughtfully and morally by the usage of nursing standard and proof based study, this will
help in achievement of the strategies planned and give better results.

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Conclusion:
From this essay, we conclude that, planning strategies is important for accomplishment of the
challenges faced by the newly graduated nurse. The medication safety is the major goal of
every clinical practice management. The basic challenge of a newly graduated nurse is
anxiety issues or stress and limited knowledge of pharmaceutical in addition to limitation of
clinical exposure. In this essay, the action plan is provided and aims to build critical thinking
process, to be observant, and to be aware of the policies made in the organization and
managing the faults created by the human factors. Thus, applying all the strategies and action
plan the medication faults may decrease and patient safety level increases with better
medication quality.
References:
(NMBA), N.a.M.B.A., 2017. Code of Ethics for Nurses. Nursing and Midwifery Board
Australia.
(NMBA), N.a.M.B.o.A., 2017. NMBA. National competency standards for the registered
nurse.
EMAP, 2012. See the big picture and stay vigilant over patient safety. Nursing Times.
L.Enns, C. & V.Sawatzky, J.-A.V., 2009. A Mentoring Needs Assessment: Validating
Mentorship in Nursing Education. Journal of Professional Nursing, 25(3), pp.145-50.
Minuz, P. & P Velo , G., 2009. Medication errors: prescribing faults and prescription errors.
Br J Clin Pharmacol., 67(6), pp.624–28.
Moyle, S., 2018. The Transition From Student to Registered Nurse. [Online] Available at:
https://www.ausmed.com/articles/transitioning-from-student-nurse/ [Accessed 10 january
2019].

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NSQHS, 2017. Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in health care. [Online]
Available at: https://www.safetyandquality.gov.au/our-work/assessment-to-the-nsqhs-
standards/nsqhs-standards-second-edition/ [Accessed 10 january 2019].
NurseJournal, 2018. The 5 Most Common Mistakes Made By New Nurses. Nurse Journal.
O Day , R. & Snowden, L., 2016. Where to find information about drugs. Australian
Prescriber, 39(3).
Smith, M.J. & Liehr, Patricia R., 2013. Middle Range Theory for Nursing. 3rd ed. USA:
Springer Publisher.
Stratis Health, M., 2019. Medication Management. [Online] Available at:
http://www.rarereadmissions.org/areas/medmanagement.html [Accessed 10 january 2019].
University, T.R., 2017. Critical Thinking and Nursing. [Online] Available at:
https://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/critical-thinking-and-nursing/834 [Accessed 10
january 2019].

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