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How to analyze the problem of medication errors
Medication error risks
How to analyze the problem of medication errors
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Target High Risk Areas for Medication Errors Medication errors are among the biggest issues in health care settings today. The effect of managed care is one of the causative factors. The need to contain costs has invariably doubled the nurses' workload making them less efficient as caregivers. Example of problem is the high incidence of medication errors. Nurses' workload has increased tremendously regardless of the fact that most of these patients are of great acuity, thereby predisposing them to a greater risk of medication errors. Medication giving include five basic rights: Right patient, Right medication, Right route, Right dose, and Right time. Contrary to the above is medication errors. Most medication errors reported involve patient allergies, insulin administration , heparin, opiates, patient controlled analgesia and potassium concentrates. Most errors with PCA devices are with rate, misprogrammed dose, wrong concentration and device malfunction errors. However, lack of basic knowledge and poor performance have also caused these errors. Another area of great concern with medication error is order transcription. Poor Transcription or orders have resulted in wrong information passed on to a patient Whether n a discharge or as an in patient. Clarification in the case of doubt is a weapon against order transcription error. Most nurses have poor concentration due to the amount of their work load that they could hardly call back the doctor to clarify either the order clearly written or an illegible order, then arriving to their own assumption. Administering medication later than specified time ordered or missed medication is an area of issue. Some prophylactics given before or after according to specified order are lifesavers. When a patient is scheduled for a surgery, prophylactic anticoagulant is administered to prevent clots and perhaps continues post-op. If such a patient is not given his/her medication as ordered he could break a clot resulting to embolism. Incorrect patient history has resulted to medication errors. It is obvious that nurses' workload permits them with a limited time that a complete or basic issue in patient history is neglected resulting to a serious health crisis or ever death and lawsuits. Poor documentation is among the biggest issue with nurses. It has been said,"if you don't chart is you didn't do it". Documenting properly bails you from a lawsuit. Most nurses are quite busy especially with another patient of a high acuity and have no time to
...health of a patient and a follow up check at the GP’s may be required.
For my research paper, I will be discussing the impact of medication errors on vulnerable populations, specifically the elderly. Technology offers ways to reduce medication errors using electronic bar-coding medication administration (BCMA) systems. However, skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) are not using these systems. Medication is still administered with a paper or electronic medication administration record (eMAR), without barcode scanning. In contrast, every hospital I have been in: as a patient, nursing student, and nurse uses BCMA systems. The healthcare system is neglecting the elderly. Nursing homes should use BCMAs to reduce the incidents of medication errors.
Unver, V., Tastan, S., & Akbayrak, N. (2012). Medication errors: Perspectives of newly graduated and experienced nurses. International Journal Of Nursing Practice, 18(4), 317-324. doi:10.1111/j.1440-172X.2012.02052.x
Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) allows physicians to electronically enter their patients’ medical orders into the EHR. These orders can then be viewed by other departments and healthcare professionals on a secured network. This system also contains safety alerts and offers permanent record keeping. CPOE was put into place to reduce the risk of medication errors and improve the safety of patient care practices. In order to reduce medication errors and improve patient safety the system was designed to have alert and signaling features to let the nurse know there is a medication safety issue. These safety issues result when there is an error in the six rights of medication administration. The six rights are; right patient, right drug, right dose, right route, right order, and right time. For example, the wrong dose of medication would alert the nurse that the dose does not match the physicians’ orders, preventing potential harm to the patient. Another example would be administering a medication outside the specified time frame. This would alert the nurse to hold the medication and investigate further. If the nurse decides to continue giving the medication they must specify their reasoning for giving i...
Tzeng, H., Yin, C., & Schneider, T. E. (2013). Medication Error-Related Issues In Nursing Practice. MEDSURG Nursing, 22(1), 13-50.
Will the veterans at the VA Outpatient clinic have fewer medication errors in the implementation of a barcode administration system compared to those not using barcode the medication system, result in decreased medication error rate over a period of a year. This is the question that will be presented for this this research proposal. Medication errors occur daily and are steadily on a rise. According to Seibert (2014), adverse drug events has risen to 450, 000 annually from medication errors that resulted in injury, of which approximately 25% are preventable. A common medication errors include “prescribing errors, wrong drug, wrong dosage, incorrect calculation, not confirming allergies, and failure to adjust medication dose due to disease
the doctor whether or not the patient needs it. The D.E.A. also has fears about
Thousands of nurses throughout the nation are exhausted and overwhelmed due to their heavy workload. The administrators do not staff the units properly; therefore, they give each nurse more patients to care for to compensate for the lack of staff. There are several reasons to why
Nurses want to give complete and quality care, but are unable to, due to the constant needs of their workload and inadequate staffing. They have to prioritize their patients needs based on the most critical treatments first. Then whatever time is left, they fill in what treatments they can. Some reasons that nursing treatments are missed include: too few staff, time required for the nursing intervention, poor use of existing staff resources and ineffective delegation.” (Kalisch, 2006) Many nurses become emotionally stressed and unsatisfied with their jobs. (Halm et al., 2005; Kalisch,
This will help confirm that the proper information is provided to all healthcare workers and will help to make any future decisions. Patients will benefit in less time lost on test being repeated and by preventing wrong diagnoses or the prescription of wrong treatments. Healthcare organizations have a benefit when good clinical records smooth decision making for patients, this allows them to have more time with patients. Poor clinical records might have a deep effect on a patient’s health in the long run. The seventh principle of the Caldicott report, an NHS report on patient information, states “the duty to share information can be as important as the duty to protect patient confidentiality (Mathioudakis et al,
Keers (2013), conducted a systematic review which included 54 studies of English language publications and found evidence relating to the causes of medication administration errors within hospitals. Prescribing and administering drugs appeared to have the largest association with the greatest number of medication errors. Harm does not specifically have to be caused for medication errors to result. The most common type of unsafe medication error was found to be slips and lapses. Slips and lapses include misidentification of patient/medication, misreading labels, mental state, or forgetting to sign a medication order. The following were all other causes of medication administration errors found to complicate patient safety: knowledge and rule-based
Thank you for you post. Medication error is a serious issue which may affect patients and even cause death. In my hospital, in order to reduce the medication mistakes, except medical record and date of birth, we use the scanner scan the patient’s ID bandage and medication to match the e-MAR. The computer system will notify us any errors. This system helps us to avoid medication errors.
Medical errors can happen in the healthcare system such as hospitals, outpatient clinics, operating rooms, doctor’s offices, pharmacies, patients’ homes and anywhere in the healthcare system where patients are being treated. These errors consist of diagnostic, treatment, medicine, surgical, equipment calibration, and lab report error. Furthermore, communication problems between doctors and patients, miscommunication among healthcare staff and complex health care systems are playing important role in medical errors. We need to look for a solution which starts changes from physicians, nurses, pharmacists, patients, hospitals, and government agencies. In this paper I will discuss how does the problem of medical errors affect our healthcare delivery system? Also how can these medical errors be prevented and reduced?
Work overload and understaffing can be significant factors that contribute to errors. In order to make improvements and maintain a high level of patient safety and quality care, it is very important that health care employees keep a record of any mistake that happens. Also, emphasis needs to be made in improving the working environment for health care professionals, and in consequence decreases the number of errors. As stated by Hughes and Beglen (2003), “Medication safety for patients is dependent upon systems, process, and human factors, which can vary significantly across health care settings” (p.415). Therefore, policies and guidelines need to be made in order to establish an acceptable number of employees available for patients per shift and to evade designating too many tasks per employee. In addition, the implementation of a system that double checks the prescriptions before giving it to the patient can help to prevent mistakes. Overall, all these changes will decrease errors and improve patient
It is one of a nurse’s duty in the medical field to administer medications, this means that one nurse is in charge of keeping track of multiple patient’s medication. Due to the amount of medication administered by nurses, medication errors occur more often than we would like, especially with younger patients. I chose this topic because medications are given to practically every patient that enters a hospital and ensuring that they are administered properly is important to keeping the patients safe. A study was done in a pediatric intensive care unit at a hospital in Zurich to “determine the number and type of medication prescription errors” (Glanzmann, Frey, Meier, & Vonbach, 2015, p. 1) that typically happen in this unit of the hospital. The goals of the study were to learn about the rate of medication errors, the most common drugs involved in the errors and how severely they affected the patient.