Medication Error

Medication Error Medication errors pose the greatest risks and consequences in many health care settings, there are many different factors that play a role in medication error. Distractions and frequent interruptions increase the risk of medication error when caring for patients. Multitasking is a major contributing factor to these human factors, it is has been documented that distractions and interruptions along with multitasking leads to medication administration errors (MAEs) (Nelms and Jones, 2011). Medication errors post a major threat to the lives of patients, by increasing the chances of harm, a live changing injury, and even cost the patients their life .

In a presentation at Saint Joseph’s Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2009, Dr. Watson presented simple caring practices nurses could implement throughout a work day to help them decrease medication errors by stopping and reflecting before moving forward. The first practice was for nurses to take a moment to “center” them-selves before

There is no exact number of medication administration errors, but reports estimate that five percent or less is reported. Previous research on MAEs has made no distinction between severe and non-severe errors (Nelms and Jones, 2011).

Dr. Watson’s caring theory was known as her Caritas Model, it was the intervention that framed it all. For Watson, the practice of caring is the central to nursing and is its unifying focus. It was originally purposed for her human caring interventions carative factors and later changed to the caritas processes (Nelms and Jones, 2011). The caritas was to restore love, compassion, and heart-centeredness; adopted by many hospitals in the United States. These practices focus was benefit of the patient and their