Methods for Mitigating Medication Errors

Nurses are responsible for multiple patients on any given day making medication errors a potential problem in the nursing field. Medication administration not only encompasses passing medication to the patients yet begins with the physician prescribing the medication, pharmacy filling the correct prescription and ending with the nurse administering and monitoring the patient for any adverse effect from the medication. According to the National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention (NCCMERP), ‘A medication error refers to any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is in the control of the healthcare professional,

One of the critical core components of Skilled Nursing Facility is medication administration. As cited by Tenhunen, Tanner, and Dahlen (2014), they stated that 88% of the residents living in the nursing homes are aged 65 years old and older. They discussed that every five of administered medications in nursing home has one probability of error. This means that about half of the residents have the possibility of two or more medication errors daily. This applies to the Pasadena Care Center (PCC) because its residents are mostly older adults who require medications on a daily basis. Moreover, residents are prescribed with multiple medications, which make them vulnerable to medication errors. The staff at PCC is trying their best to ensure safe medication administration, however, it still in need of a major change. The goal of the proposed change is to decrease the medication errors in this organization to ensure patient safety.

Use special procedure for the use of high-risk medications using a multi-disciplinary approach, including written guidelines, checklists, pre-printed orders, double-checks, special packaging, special labeling, and education. (Institute of Medicine (IoM) Strategies Regarding Medication Practices, 2005).

Currently, more responsibilities are being given to the pharmacy technician that were traditionally performed by pharmacists, such as clarifying prescriptions and entering orders. With these additional responsibilities for the pharmacy technician, this will allow the pharmacist to spend additional time with patients. However, with these additional responsibilities enables more opportunities for error. In 2008, a study was performed at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital, a 178 bed acute care facility

Errors made while administering medications is one of the most common health care errors reported. It is estimated that 7,000 hospitals deaths yearly are attributed to medication administration errors.

Excellent outline for your quality improvement initiative that addresses medication errors. I like how you describe the closed-loop medication administration process that includes all members of the interprofessional team. Your references are also well researched and current. From the outline, it is unclear what the barriers and implementation strategy are to reduce medication errors. One suggestion I would make is to look at the grading rubric. There are four main points that the rubric requires to complete the objectives for the paper. I usually create headings that align with the rubric, this helps me organize my thoughts and to meet the objectives of the assignment.

Adverse drug events are the sixth leading cause of death in the United States and represent a significant financial burden to healthcare institutes at an estimated cost of $5.6 million per hospital per year (Meguerditchian N, Krotneva, Reidel, Huang, & Tamblyn, 2013). According to The Joint Commission (2006), medication reconciliation is the process of comparing a patient’s medication orders to all of the medications the patient has been taking. This reconciliation is done to identify and resolve medication discrepancies, which are unintended or unexplained

For many patients the scariest part of being in the hospital is having to rely on other people to control your life changing decisions. One large part of this is the medications one is given while in our care. I can only imagine what it must be like for patients to have a stranger to come in and start administering drugs to me. This would be especially scary if I did not know what these medications did, or what negative effects could be caused by taking them. Unfortunately, the fear of medication errors that many patients have are not unfounded. Estimates range from 1.5 to 66 million patients a year have medication errors occur while they are in the care of health care professionals. Considering all of the technology we have at our

McComas, Riingenm and Kim (2014), conducted a study that investigated the occurrence of medication errors and the efficiency of medication administration following the implementing an eMAR system. The study was conducted in an appropriate setting and all observed nurses volunteered for the study. Before implementing the eMARs mandatory class were provided and nurses were evaluated for competency. Data was collected by observation and nurses were randomly followed throughout a medication pass. Collected data consisted of medication errors, distractions during medication pass and amount of time spent administering medications.

The issues addressed are Findings 1 and 3: Finding 1 is patient medication errors are up and there is a perception of shady hiring practices and playing favorites. All employees are responsible for compliance. Policies and professional standards exist for the medical profession. The challenges will be reintroducing employees to Federal and state law that govern the profession. For hiring practices and playing favorites the challenges faced are the lack of compliance reporting structure or training for understanding compliance. There is a perception that work rules are not being enforced. Finding 3 is high job turnover and low employee morale. The challenges faced will be building communication strategies, building confidence in leadership,

The hospital should consider implementing “electronic prescribing through “computerized provider order entry systems” ( Radley, Wasserman, Olsho, Shoemaker, Spranca, & Bradshaw, 2013, p. 470). This system is an effective way to reduce patient harm associated with medication errors (Radley et al, 2013). In fact, The Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommends the use of the “electronic prescribing (e-prescribing) through a computerized provider order entry (CPOE) system” as an effective method to address such issues (Radley et al, 2013, p. 470). Medication errors are often a result of misinterpreted handwriting or poor handwriting (Radley et al., 2013). The use of electronic prescribing reduces medication errors associated with those reasons (Radley et al., 2013, p. 470). Studies prove CPOE reduces medical errors (Radley et al, 2013, p. 473). However, there were some mediation errors associated with electronic prescribing as the study also pointed out. The study found that users or

Safety is one of the most important traits of providing care to a patient. Medical mistakes are a growing concern within the health care field, as each year an estimated 400,000 lives are lost to preventable medical mistakes (James, 2013). One important subset of medical mistakes is medication errors. The National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention defines a medication error as “…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” (National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention, 2014). Health care

In today’s current fast-paced and demanding field of heath care, medication administration has become complex and time-consuming task. Approximately one-third of the nurses’ time is used in medication administration. There is much potential for error because of the complexity of the medication administration process. Since nurses are the last ones to actually administer the medication to the patient therefore they become responsible for medication administration errors (MAE). Reasons for MAE may include individual factors, organizational factors or system factors. This paper will discuss the root causes analysis of MAE and strategies to prevent them.

Upon completing the course of Statistical thinking: Improving business performance Ben Davis remembers learns the three principles of statistical thinking. The principle that we will be using in this case, would be the first one that says, “All work occurs in a system of interconnected processes (how the business or processes works). As a pharmacist's assistant in the HMO's pharmacy, Ben must create a process approach on how improvements can be made in prescription accuracy. “Fingers are being pointed, for example: the pharmacists blame sloppy handwriting and incomplete instructions from doctors for the problem; doctors blame pharmacy assistants like me who actually do most of the computer entry of the prescriptions, claiming that

Medication error is one of the biggest problems in the healthcare field. Patients are dying due to wrong drug or dosage. Medication error is any preventable incident that leads to inappropriate medication use or harms the patient while the medication is in the control of the health care professional,or patient (U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 2015). It is estimated about 44,000 inpatients die each year in the United States due to medication errors which were indeed preventable (Mahmood, Chaudhury, Gaumont & Rust, 2012). There are many factors that contribute to medication error. However, the most common that factors are human factors, right patient information, miscommunication of abbreviations, wrong dosage. Healthcare providers do not intend to make medication errors, but they happen anyways. Therefore, nursing should play a tremendous role to reduce medication error