Medication errors in hospitals - Research Paper Example

Medication Errors in Hospitals A device or medication faults more often takes the form of erroneous use of a prescription order or the wrong operation or placing a medical device in a wrong manner. Errors also include unintentional exchange of a mistaken product in the place of the prescribed one. Also, faults may occur for example, when confusing product name results in the wrong product being dispersed or when in attention leads to an overdose of a certain intended drug. A considerable number of injuries occur annually because of medication or device errors (Department of health, 2010) In general medication mistakes are presumed to be as a result of certain problems within the whole health care system, implying that these faults are usually multiple errors that exists in almost the entire health care system, for example a doctors’ illegible written prescription pads as well as unclear or rather unfamiliar drug labelling may also result in pharmacists misreading prescriptions and labelling and filling prescription with the wrong medication. Particularly in a hospital milieu and setting, medication safety is especially a very sensitive and delicate issue considering their composite mix of technological and human systems [Hen07]. Melcher, Lampert, Haschke, Drewe& Krahenbuhl (2007), stated that medication errors occurred mostly during the administration process, he concluded that majority of the errors arise during the administration 53%, followed by prescription 17%, and preparation 14% and finally transcription 11%. Therefore, medication administration seem to be predominantly to be susceptible to errors since a small number of system checks as majority of the medications are administered by a single nurse. The causes of potential medication errors are mainly a combination of things which are related to the organization, patients, physicians and pharmacists in addition to nurses as well. The following are the various ways through which Medication errors in a hospital can be minimised; 1. Improvements in the organization for quality improvement of medication errors. The improvements that can be implemented by the organization for quality improvements include; The developing of a dependable and regular approach that permits for monitoring , reporting and examining as well as reviewing of errors in an accommodative environment, this identifies and eliminates the reasons for errors. The organization develops a system for frequent and recurrent assessment and evaluation of nurse’s medication administration processes and reassurance of continuous supervision by the head nurse. The development of a quality system which should involves policies and procedure manual to give guidance on medication administration process and enhance quality of nursing care in medication administration. Increase the effectiveness of communication among health care providers to improve and ascertain continuity of patient care. Finally revise and redesign the medication recording formats such as medication kardex, medication history sheets, and medication error reports to make uniform medical practitioners performance moreover the hospital should make available adequate supplies in terms of facilities and equipments essential for correct preparation and administration of medications and the provision of appropriate rooms for preparation of medication. 2. Improvements on physicians and pharmacists for quality improvements of medical areas In regards to improvements on physicians and pharmacists the following changes can be implemented; Physicians should be aware of the hospital guidelines and guiding principles in regards to drafting medication orders in the right format, readable and understandable instructions and monitor oral medication orders to augment the medication administration procedure. Physicians and doctors should be readily available all through inside the intensive care unit (ICU) upon being requested for confirmation and clarification of medication orders. Chemisists or pharmacist should make available any and all information to nurses in regards to drug therapy, substitute drugs, times and doses. In addition, pharmacists should put into consideration the creation of references that deal particularly with medication safety issues and drug incongruity for the nursing units. 3. Improvements related to nurses for quality improvements of medication errors The following should be considered while with the aim of reducing medication errors by nurses; The nurses ought to carry out double verifications on the medication administration process, if the nurse is not certain about the accuracy of any information that concerns the calculation of a dosage. The nurse should record and confirm patients’ hypersensitivity and or allergic reactions and the patients’ previous medication use. The nurses ought to check transcriptions of the dosage orders and confirm that they are the right medication by doing a comparison between it and the original doctors orders prior to preparing and dispensing ways for its continual improvements. (Tang, Sheu, Yu, Wei, & Chen, 2007) 4. Bench marking An Organization that is interested in improving its performance may achieve it through the adaption and implementation of key practices that make other firms outstanding. This technique involves assessing their internal operations or conditions in relation to a carefully defined benchmark. In simple terms, benchmarking has been referred to as “learning from the pros”. Bench markers decide which of their own processes hold the key to their future excellence, identify top performance of those crucial operations, evaluate the practices of the best in terms of industry performance and note the differences that distinguish those practices from their own operations in addition to adapting major practices for their internal use in an effort to close the performance cap. Benchmarking is a very vital element in majority of the applications of total quality management. In an institution that provides healthcare, the following are the potential benchmarks, Prime time utilization, start time accuracy for the first case of the day, start-time accuracy for subsequent cases, estimated case duration accuracy as well as an add-on rate day of surgery. The direct benefits of benchmarking to a healthcare providing organization among others include, it aids in optimizing overall financial and operational as well as clinical performance, it provides actionable insight into the major areas of opportunity via the hospital department dashboard. It also empowers the organization directors to have meaningful fact based interactions with senior and management in addition to caregivers in regards to performance and improvement opportunities. Moreover, its helps in minimizing the cost of collecting and analyzing through put and capacity metrics. References Department of Health. Healthy People 2010. (2010). Government Printing Office. Newyork Hen07: , (Henry & Foureur, 2007), Read More