Patient Safety and Medication Administration in Nursing - Research Paper Example

Patient Safety And Medication AdministrationAlready, it has been established that there are several factors that can bring about medication errors in the nursing setup (Athanasakis, 2010, p. 774). Due to the effects that these medication errors carry, it is always important that the right procedures and interventions be put in place in minimizing their occurrence (Conrad et al. 2010, p. 140). Of the numerous interventions available, one that has been tried and proven to work is the 9 rights of medication administration (Elliott and Liu, 2010).

Explaining the usage of the 9 rights of medication administration, Athanasakis, 2010, p. 773) explained that these are generally guidelines that tell the nurse to ensure that the right procedures are followed in 9 major formats. The formats are given belowright patient right time and frequencyright doseright route of admissionright drugright dilution or compatibility right flow rate right monitoring right documentation From the list above, the understanding that is developed is that in order for a nurse to avoid medication errors, the nurse ought to ensure that whatever medication is being administered is being given in the right format (Elliott M and Liu Y. (2010, p. 3001).

Zhang, Patel & Johnson (2008, p. 77) believed that nurses must ensure that all these right procedures are followed but Conrad et al. (2010, p. 141) on the other hand stated that it may not all medications that would have to go through all the 9 rights but at least in all cases, 5 of these should be used. Reflecting on the 9 rights, Palmieri et al. (2009, p. 36) noted that the 9 rights have been made to cover aspects of medication, which when ignored, can lead to serious errors with the administration.

To have a better understanding of how the 9 rights helps to prevent or minimize errors, Elliott M1, Liu Y. (2010, p. 300) stated that one may simply turn the ‘right’ to ‘wrong’ and know the effect that a refusal to abide by the procedures can bring. Another important intervention that has been noted to be very effective with the minimization of errors is the organization of medications within the medication room (Alldred et al. 2008, 320). In order jurisdiction, this is referred to as sorting, labeling, or nomenclature (Alldred et al.

2008, 321). Nurses have been noted to make the Accidental mistake of confusing the labels of some medical products for others ((Palmieri et al., 2009, p. 67). Because of this when there is a mixture of drugs with similar packages, the chances that there will be mix up leading to errors are higher (Athanasakis, 2010, p. 778). Organizing the medications within the medication room would therefore ensure that such mix-ups between medications are avoided (Zhang, Patel & Johnson, 2008, p. 75). But to use this procedure effectively, Alldred et al.

2008, 319) advised that it is important for nurses to commit a lot of time and resources to the arrangement at the medication room. This is because the mix-up can also occur while organizing the medications and Zhang, Patel & Johnson (2008, p. 74) saw this to be more serious. The seriousness with this is that when other nurses are going to the medication room to administer drugs and they find the drugs to be organized, they tend to assume that everything is in place and so do not perform any more checks (Conrad et al. 2010, p. 140).

In implementing this recommendation therefore, Palmieri et al. (2009, p. 33) suggested three steps to follow:Nurses must always double check with drug labels before placing them in an organized manner.It is important to ensure that there is a third party evaluation whereby another person is made to cross check with what has been done before. At the point of delivering drugs, it is important that there will be rechecking to confirm that the right drug has been selected. ReferencesAlldred D.P., Standage C.

, Zermansky A.G., Jesson B., Savage I., Franklin B.D., Barber N., Raynor D.K. (2008). "Development and validation of criteria to identify medication-monitoring errors in care home residents". International Journal of Pharmacy Practice 16 (5): 317–323. doi:10.1211/ijpp.16.5.0007Athanasakis E. (2010). Prevention of medication errors made by nurses in clinical practice. Health Science Journal. 6(4), 773-779. Retrieved from http://www.hsj.gr/volume6/issue4/6416.pdfConrad C, Fields W, McNamara T, Cone M.

and Atkins P. (2010). Medication room madness: calming the chaos. Journal of Nursing Care Quality. 25(2):137-44. doi: 10.1097/NCQ.0b013e3181c3695d.Elliott M and Liu Y. (2010). The nine rights of medication administration: an overview. British Journal of Nursing. 9(5):300-5.Palmieri, P. A., DeLucia, P. R., Ott, T. E., Peterson, L. T., & Green, A. (2009). "The anatomy and physiology of error in averse healthcare events". Advances in Health Care Management. Advances in Health Care Management 7: 33–68. doi:10.1016/S1474-8231(09)07003-1Zhang, J.

, Patel, V.L., & Johnson, T.R (2008). "Medical error: Is the solution medical or cognitive?". Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 6 (Supp1): 73–77. doi:10.1197/jamia.M1232