Medication errors can be a result of long work shifts, inexperience staff, medical services such as an interpreter, multiple medications for a single patient, environmental factors, fatigue in doctors and nurses, dosage requirements, poor communication, distribution system error, improper drug storage, miscalculations or measurements, confusing labels or packaging of medications, poor handwriting, verbal commands, lack of authority in policies and procedures, poor overseers.…
According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, adverse drug events account for over 770,000 patient injuries or deaths each year. ADEs account for an increase of 8-12 hospital days per patient at a cost increase of $16,000 to $24,000 over other admissions/ diagnoses. This leads to an average national cost to hospitals of between 1.56- 5.96 billion per year. Furthermore, as much as 30% of adverse drug reactions are due to preventable medication errors such as missed dose, wrong technique, duplicate dosing, and preparation errors. Going further, the AHRQ states that between 42-60 % of medication errors are due to excessive dosing for patient weight, age, renal function, and underlying medical condition (AHRQ 2001).…
In the aspect of how non-profit organizations impact on medication error, according the National Coordination Council of Medication Error Reporting and Prevention their vision is, “No Patient will be harmed by a medication error”, (www.mccmerp.org, 2012). Their mission is to increase awareness about medication error through communication. Also maximize the safe use of medication making sure that they educate the consumers, patients and health care professionals about cause of medication errors and strategies for prevention. However medication errors/issues are nothing new however it has not received the attention that it needs. Medication errors/issues do not target a specific business. Everyone is affected by medication errors, from health care settings such as physicians’ office, nursing homes, pharmacies, urgent care centers, and care delivered in the home.…
Any kind of error, whether it causes no harm to the patient or kills the patient, is still an error that needs to be reported and addressed. This collection of data begins with looking at the CPOE (electronic physician orders), Pyxis dispense history, eMAR, narcotic waste history (if a narcotic error), barcode scans, and the stage that the error occurred. These are all important data pieces to collect and analyze in order to pain the picture of what happened and why. The stages of where/when the error occurred are very important for identifying patient harm. Stage one is considered a prescribing error where the incorrect drug or dose is selected for a patient. This kind of error is also the cause of illegible handwriting and/or the misspelling of a drug with a similar name (Williams, 2007). Prescription errors make up for between 1-11% of all written prescriptions (Sanders & Esmail, 2003). Stage two is where dispensing errors occur. This is considered to be selection of the wrong product where usually there are look alike and sound alike drugs involved such as Losec and Lasix. Step three and four are the preparation and administering stages and the rates of these errors vary between 3.5% and 49% (NPSA, 2007). These stages are areas of high risk within nursing practice where nurses fail to verify important information such as drug, patient, dose, time, and route (Williams, 2007). IV drugs are suggested to be as high as 25% of medication errors in these stages (Bruce & Wong, 2001). Stage five is errors in monitoring outcome. Patients take certain drugs that require continuous monitoring to ensure the dosing is correct and there are no adverse…
This article explains in great detail the errors that many pharmacists make that contribute to the medication errors in and emergency department. The leading cause of pharmacists errors are in the charting that is done prior to dispersing medication. This article shares the enormous information in regards to the ways that pharmacists could do their job differently in order to keep the number of medication errors down.…
From the past ,Health care workers wear facing a very serious and sensitive problem while treating patient which is Medications Errors. Patient safety is characterized as opportunity from incidental harm because of medical care, or absence of medicinal blunders, or absence of abuse in administrations. Medical error is: "a failure in the therapeutic process that can possibly lead to harm to the patient"(1). It occurs when a health care provider selects improper technique in care or improperly executes an proper strategy of care. Medical errors can happen anywhere in the health care system: In hospitals, clinics, operations rooms, doctors' offices, nursing homes, pharmacies, and patients' homes. Errors can happen…
When doing the job of nursing one of the most important aspects is patient safety. The biggest danger to patients is medication. A medication error is when the nurse gives a patient the wrong medication or the dose of medication could be wrong. The danger of the medication error is that it can lead to an over dose, a reaction, or even death to a patient. There are several things to know when dealing with medication errors like who should fill it out, who should receive a completed report, why would you fill one out, what is included, and what a near miss is.…
Medication Safety Introduction When an individual is sick or injured and visits a hospital, medication plays an important role in their recovery. Nurses play a vital role in the administration of medication in the clinical setting and surprisingly there are many errors that occur that could result in more complications or even death. On average hospitalized patients experience one medication error per day (Xu, et al, 2014, p. 286). There are many reasons as to why errors occur but there are also many different ways to prevent those errors from happening. It takes a lot of knowledge and focus to ensure errors are kept at a minimum to none.…
Each year in the United States there are just over 450,000 reported medication errors, they are the sixth leading cause of death, as well as costing the health care industry roughly 3.8 billion dollars (Flanders & Clark, 2010). QSEN’s published mission statement is to, “Address the challenge of preparing future nurses who will have the knowledge, skills and attitudes (KSAs) necessary to continuously improve the quality and safety of the healthcare systems within which they work.” (2016). QSEN has seen the devastating effects that medication errors have had on the nursing profession and are continuously publishing refined guidance and evidence based best practices to better prevent…
Write a paper outlining the most valuable learnings in the 16 courses. You may be surprised at some basic knowledge that IHI focuses on. At times your learning will be about knowledge that is not yet firmly established in our industry. Please also identify any course you did not think was worth the time.…
A medication error is any avoidable event that may cause or lead to untimely medication use or patient harm; however, while the medication is still in control of the health care administer (Brock, 2006). 80 percent of the most severe medical errors can be interrelated communication between clinicians, primarily in handoffs. For example, a handoff is a medical error if information regarding an essential diagnostic test is not communicated carefully and properly between providers at shift change (Starme, 2015). However, the end result could be a detrimentally harmful delay in patient care.…
Errors are an innate part of human life. Execution Safe execution of medical orders is plays a significant part role of in patient care. It is also the main component of nursing performance and has a distinguished role in patient safety. Medication errors are a healthcare professional’s worst nightmare and has become one of the biggest issues devoted encountered in today’s healthcare setting. According to the National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention (2016), “a medication error is any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is in the control of the health care professional, patient, or consumer. Such events may be related to professional…
Reducing harm caused by health care is a global priority, and there has been a dramatic increase in patient safety improvement efforts over the past decade with the development of science of patient safety (3).In its 1999 report, Journal of American Medical Information Association identified medical error as an important…
As a result of the literature and analysis, I learned that safe medication administration is one of the most important skills that a nurse can have. If a medication error occurs, it can have many ethical, social, economic and safety ramifications. The research presented has also allowed me to see that medication errors are more likely to occur in certain situations, such as a hectic and distracting workplace. The literature suggests that I should do the best that I can to avoid such situations by finding a quiet space and taking my time to attentively go over the required medications to prevent error.…
Patient safety is a common goal in every healthcare institution. One of the major issues in a patient safety is an error that can be caused by an abbreviations. The most common is medication errors. One of the most common but preventable causes of medication errors is the use of ambiguous medical notations. Some abbreviations, symbols, and dose designations are frequently misinterpreted and lead to mistakes that result in patient harm. They can also delay the start of therapy and waste time spent in clarification.…