Medication Error

Technology in health care is growing substantially every single second of the day and becoming an essential for health care professionals. Technology has not only is made communication easier, but played a rather large role in preventing patient harm. Valerie J. Gooder Ph.D., RN reports that the Institute of Medicine in 1999 reported that “nearly a million patients each year are injured in hospitals in the United States due to error. Medication errors occur more often than other categories of preventable errors (19%), and most medication errors occurred during medication administration (34%) where they were more likely to directly impact the patient and cause harm.” (Gooder, 2011). Not long after looking at these percentages was the BCMA (Barcode
A nurse should always do her own double checks to make sure they have all five rights; right patient, right time, right frequency, right dose, and right route. It is possible that an order shows up that was put in wrong by the doctor or pharmacist but still checks out when scanned. A recently published journal called Nurses’ Preceptions of Causes of Medication Errors and Barriers to Reporting did a study that showed that 30.4 % of nurses though the cause of medication error were due to physician prescribing the wrong dose, or about 28% though the physician writing was illegible which caused the med error, this was out of 983 registered nurses (Ulanimo, V., O’Leary-Kelley, C., & Connolly, P., 2007), which is why a nurses double check is so critical. On the other hand, the nurse may have to override the system as well. As Lindsey Getz put it “nurses may occasionally need to rely on their clinical judgment to override what the computer says.” (Getz, 2010). The doctor could have changed the order or asked that the patient got a double dose, etc. So in a way having to override the system has made nurses feel like patient care time is being decreased because of the extra steps in having to override the system. Getz reports that “the trade-off is patient safety, and there’s no nurse out there that doesn’t value that” (Getz, 2010). Therefore,
A recent journal presents the issue. For some medications there can be two or more barcodes on the package, one is associated with national drug code and the other being the one intended for BCMA purposes. Sadly the frustration of barcodes not scanning properly can lead to potential errors during medication passes because as I mentioned above medical staff have the ability to override the system (Cohen, M. R., & Smetzer, J. L., 2014). I, myself have had the same issues where I spend extra time just looking for the right barcode to scan, although frustrating I try to scan everyone before overriding the system. Cohen and Smetzer reported a solution in which they have went right to the FDA “We have asked the FDA to discuss this problem internally with their barcode work group to see whether they can have manufacturers redeploy these barcodes elsewhere on the package, or at least clearly identify which barcode should be scanned during clinical use.”(Cohen, M. R., & Smetzer, J. L., 2014). Which I believe could make this system in the future will transform health care medication administration to a very safe