Medication Errors In Health Care

Years ago electronic health records (EHR) did not exists; health professionals stored patient medical data on paper which made it difficult for them to share information. The number of providers that used electronic health records (EHR) between 2001 and 2011 grew by 57% (Healthit, 2014). I chose to discuss scenario A. Patient safety is essential when it comes to health care. Medication errors have caused more than 7,000 deaths every year (Hughes & Blegen, 2008). The scenario shows that electronic medical records can have benefits and challenges. No matter how busy an organization is health care professionals must take caution when administering medications to patients. Medications errors can still occur while using barcoding methods in any health care setting. The implementation of barcoding have some benefits and challenges that have been known for more than decades. The use of the system helps reduce medication errors to be administered. Electronic administration record (EMAR) shows to reduce errors associated with giving the medication at the wrong time, not timing when the medication was administered, and or the patient received incorrect dosage. According to studies, there has been a “reduction by 41%
That will be considered as medication error because now the patient is getting the wrong drug administered. The computer will not know this information even if the nurse scans the patient’s wristband. On the other hand, some nurses the system steps to give patients because they have to go through all the prompts. And also technical issues such as battery life is necessary to use the barcoding device (Getz, 2010). Some nurses also experience printing problems such as unreadable wristbands which make it difficult to