Medication errors and prevention in nursing - Research Paper Example

MEDICATION ERRORS AND PREVENTION IN NURSING The increasing call for healthcare quality takes into consideration several factorsand medication error mitigation is one such factor. The healthcare stakeholders and nurses in particular have in many occasions committed such medication errors in the course of duty .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 health care professional, patient, or consumer (Aspden & Institute of Medicine, 2006).

Such events may be related to professional practice, health care products, procedures, and systems, including prescribing; order communication; product labeling, packaging, and nomenclature; compounding; dispensing; distribution; administration; education; monitoring; and use.The greatest cause of the errors in medication is significantly associated to limited technology in most healthcare facilities among other personal factors like social stress, fatigue and incompetence. Research findings have established that modern technology can be applied with relatively high effectiveness in terms of precision and accuracy of medical related services delivery (Aspden & Institute of Medicine, 2006).

The best known way for hospitals to protect patients from errors is by adopting technology called computerized physician order entry (CPOE). The physician or any other authorized prescriber enters orders for a patient on a computer that contains patient information such as key lab values, clinical condition, allergies, etc. The computer checks the safety and appropriateness of the order and sends it electronically to the pharmacy (Aspden & Institute of Medicine, 2006).In the Colchicine example, a good CPOE system would alert the physician to the misplaced decimal in the order, and the best systems would prevent the order from being written in the first place.

In my mind, one of the greatest advances of CPOE is that it eliminates the need for pharmacists to decipher physician handwriting. I’ve often wondered how they do that. Increased awareness creation through periodic seminars would also address personal issues that contribute to such mistakes by nurses.It is worth to conclude that the global aim of improving the healthcare quality would be achieve to some significant level if such medication measures are taken into consideration.ReferenceAspden, P.

, & Institute of Medicine (U.S.). (2006). Preventing medication errors. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.