The Effects of Electronic Medicine Administration in Reduction - Research Proposal Example

ADVANCED RESEARCH DESIGN University Affiliation Student Name Course Date Study Title: What Does the Evidence Indicate are the effects of Electronic Medicine administration in the reduction of medical errors in the Adult Intensive Care Unit in the UK? Table of Content Research Question 3 Aims 3 Objectives 3 Introduction 3 Methodology 9 Methods 9 Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria 9 The information included and excluded from the report is as shown in the inclusion and exclusion criteria table that is attached in the appendix 9 Data Analysis 10 Ethics 10 Rigor 11 Limitations 11 Timeframe 12 Dissemination 12 References 13 Appendix 16 Research Question What Does the Evidence Indicate are the effects of Electronic Medicine administration in the reduction of medical errors in the Adult Intensive Care Unit in the UK? Aims To explore the impact of the electronic medicine administration in reduction of medication errors in the Adult Intensive Care Unit in the UK Objectives To investigate the benefits of administering medicine electronically To investigate the causes of the medication errors in the Adult Intensive Care Unit To investigate the relationship between the electronic medicine administration and medication errors in the Adult Intensive Care unit Introduction The adult population in the society requires a lot of care because they are susceptible to infections and diseases due to the weakening of their immune system as a result of their advanced age. The care of such individuals is a mater of life and death as the line between life and death for this demographic is so thin and hence an effective, efficient and rapid response system is needed (Mansour mansour, 2012). In all medical procedures and practices, errors in judgment or execution of the procedures may arise for one reason or the other. These errors may result in fatalities among the patients or complications in the patients. The resultant condition of the patient may lead to the medical institution to incur losses as they strive to correct the errors that had been committed. The other consequence of erroneous medical procedure is the families of the affected parties might sue the hospital for the complications or the death of their family members. These law suites are costly for the hospitals as they may stretch to millions of dollars which is money that the hospital may as well use for its own advancement. Such suits may also reduce the amount of patients preferring the hospital as their care givers resulting in reduced income for the hospital. The medical practitioner in question or the entire practice may also lose their license to practice medicine (Joseph Bubalo, 2013). The adverse effects of the errors in care of patients either young or old are very costly for all parties involved and as a result it is of paramount importance that the hospitals or any care facility come up with means of mitigating the occurrence of these errors. There are many ways in which medical error in the treatment of patient can be reduced. One of the methods is being tough with any practitioner who is involved but the reactive nature of this method makes if quite inefficient. This method is still used as it sends out a message and this makes the medical practitioners to take extensive care in dealing with the patients (Jamie Coleman, 2012). The introduction of technological methods to care and monitor the care of patients has extremely reduced the errors in medical administration. Since medical errors are still prevalent in the healthcare system, the application of technology has become integral in improving the quality of care, safety and the overall enhancement of each patient experience in the health care institutions across the world. The only issue with the technological approach in streamlining the medical field is the huge resources required to make such a move a success. Resources in this case are used to refer to the monetary requirements to purchase the technology and also the human expertise required to operate this equipment. Literature Review Medical errors can be defined as deviations from the physicians order as written on the patient chart. These are recognized causes of morbidity and mortality in the hospital setting and can occur in any stage of the medication management process. Medication management errors, as reported by the statistics in the UK, are frequent in the intensive care setting and it is in these settings that they have severe consequences (Mansour mansour, 2012). There are three types of errors which can occur in the medication management and administration process in our health care facilities. The first kind of error is broadly known as the prescribing error. This kind of error occurs when the attending physician to the patient does not take all symptoms of the patient to consideration or can also be due to his/her omission. This error can be broken down to four sub categories which are; inappropriate drug is prescribed to the patient, the correct drug is prescribed but the calculations of the dosage are inappropriate, inappropriate monitoring in the administering of the dosage to the patient and lastly, therapeutic duplication of the prescription. These errors are predominantly due to the inexperience of the attending medical attendant (Hutchinson, 2006). The second category of medical error is to deal with the dispensing of the drug after the medical team has administered the prescription. The subdivisions involved in this group include; calculating problems, inappropriate labeling leading to wrong drug administration, provision of inadequate information when prescribing the drugs which may lead to vague dosage and lastly, confirmation of drug bias in drug selection (Banning, 2006). The third category is in the administration which can be broken down into drug administration to the wrong patient; drug issued more than once to the same patient due to miscommunication among the hospital staff, drug administration at the wrong time, drugs given through the wrong means, wrong choice of drug combinations and drugs given at the wrong rate (Banning, 2006). These medical and medication errors are caused by a combination of many factors. The main issue that causes these errors is the knowledge of the attending medical practitioners. With highly experienced staff in a facility, it is highly unlikely to have such errors occurring under their watch. Effective communication among the staff especially when the staff shifts are changing is also vital in maintaining the prescription to the intensive care patients is strictly maintained. The other issues that may lead to the occurrence of these errors in an intensive care facility are lapse in judgment of the attending care givers as a result of fatigue due to the workload, inefficient records and stock keeping of the drugs and poor handwriting (Banning, 2006). To prevent the occurrence of these errors the evolution of the HIT technique has become widely used. HIT, an acronym of Health Information Technology, is important for the limitation of these medical errors which have become common especially in the intensive care of adults in the UK. The main features that the HIT approach offers are as documented below (Hutchinson, 2006). Computerized documentation of procedures and drug administration Online review of test results Clinical Decision Support System (DSS) Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) Bar Code assistant Medication Administration (BCMA) The two main methods of the HIT applied in hospitals across the globe with the aim of reducing errors in the adult intensive care are; the Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) and the Bar Code assistant Medication Administration (BCMA) (Jamie Coleman, 2012). The CPOE is the most used method in the management and administration drugs as a way to reduce errors in medical administration. The features of the program are Electrically Order medication Diagnosis tests assistance Rapid communication with pharmacies to enhance drug prescriptions Enhance decision support capabilities The use of this method is needed especially in the UK since records show that the average number of medical errors that occur per day is 1.7. Most of these are to deal with medication administration. The only problem with this procedure is the cost of implementing this program. In the UK, the cost of implementation depends on the size of the hospital. For an institution with 200 beds, the system costs approximately 450000 Euros whereas for a hospital with 1000 beds then the cost will be about 14 million Euros (Richard D. Paolleti, 2007). The BCMA method is used in medication administration as a means of reducing the number of medical errors. According to statistics from the UK bureau of statistics, 34% of the errors in the medical field relate to the administration of the drugs. Another shocking statistic is that below 2% of these errors are detected at the bedsides. This means that most of the errors go undetected and can be disastrous especially in the adult intensive care system. The BCMA is important in ensuring the right drugs are administered to the right patient in the right dosage. Bar coding systems link the prescription to the patient hence chances of the wrong drug being administered is reduced drastically. As any system, this method is expensive but a necessary inclusion to our hospitals for the well being of or adult intensive care patients (Richard D. Paolleti, 2007). Methodology The research project was conducted across medical facilities in the UK with preference given to adult intensive care institutions. The data collected mostly from written sources from libraries and the web was analyzed and presented in this paper. Methods Since this was a research paper the main source of the data was electronic sources, the internet and library publications. This takes advantage of the resources that Oxford Books provide, and ensures the reliability of the databases as recommended that the databases supplied will have been examined by library staff. The use of databases also helps clarify where the evidence gathered was compiled from, another step to stop bias choices. Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria The information included and excluded from the report is as shown in the inclusion and exclusion criteria table that is attached in the appendix Data Analysis Comparing the three methods of mitigating medical errors is demonstrated in the table below The table demonstrates the performance of the three methods of reducing medical errors. From the table, it can be seen that using CPOE and BCMA are better methods than employing additional staff members to deal with the problem Ethics For this particular research question, the following ethical considerations were made Data was used within the appropriate context without misusing data Bias was avoided as professionally possible The content is original and any quoted parts are fully referenced Rigor As shown by the analysis of the data and the arrangement of the work, the paper is within the accepted level with regards to rigor Limitations In coming up with this report the following main challenge were resources. The resources can be broadly categorized into two; Information or data collection Human resources Information and data acquisition was done by the source provided and other relevant sources which had relevant information in line with the research. Sifting through the data bases in the library and the online publications was a tedious task and hence the amount of information is summarized to fit within the required length of this paper. The summarizing of the data may have in some way reduced the efficiency of the information and therefore bias the report. Regarding human resources, the people who conducted the data collection may have been novices in the medical care giving field and particularly concerning adult care giving. The inexperience of the data collection personnel contribute largely on the content of the paper. The inexperience of the data collector may lead to miss taking vital data that could have changed the results of the research. Timeframe The period of the research and writing of the paper is one year and the task allocations have been broken down into sections as has been described in the appendix of this paper. Dissemination The lecturer will determine if and how the information in this paper will be made available. The paper will be available in the school website but this is after assessment by the department. References Banning, M. (2006) 'Medical Errors: Professional Issues and Concerns', Nursing old people, vol. 18, no. 3, January. David Maslove, N.R.a.H.L. (2011) 'Computerized Physical Ordrer Entry In the Critical Care Environment: A review of Current Literature', Journal of Intensive Care Medicine, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 161-171. Hutchinson, B.C.a.B. (2006) 'Reducing medication errors by using applied technology', Nursing, vol. 36, no. 8, pp. 24-26. Jamie Coleman, J.H.a.R.F. (2012) 'Deriving Dose Limits for Warnings in Electronic Prescribing Systems', Drug safety, vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 291-300. Jonathan Karnon, A.M.J.D.P.B.A.H.J.O.N.T.P.P.L.F.-P.B.-T.K.T.G.a.P.T. (2008) 'Modelling the expected net benefits of interventions to reduce the burden of medication errors', Journal of health services research and policy, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 85-91. Joseph Bubalo, b.A.w.J.W.T.N.E.H.L.M.s.L.N.a.N.E. (2013) 'Does applying technology throughout the Medication use process improve patient safety with Antineoplastics', Journal of oncology Pharmacy Practice, vol. 20, no. 6, pp. 445-460. Mansour mansour, V.J.a.A.E. (2012) 'Nursing in Critical Care', British Association of Critical care Nurses, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 189-199. Pieters Helmons, L.W.a.C.D. (2009) 'Effects of bar-code assisted medication administration on medication administration errors and accuracy in multiple patient care areas', American Journal of health System Pharmacy, vol. 66, no. 1, pp. 1202-1212. Richard D. Paolleti, T.M.S.M.G.L.A.A.f.J.A.K.J.M.m.a.T.S. (2007) 'Using bar-code technology and medication observation methodology for safer medication administration', American Journal of Health-Systems Pharmarcy, vol. 64, March, pp. 536-543. Appendix Inclusion Exclusion Reason From 2000 to present Nothing before 2000 In order to obtain recent information of the topic. Updated information can be used rather than too old information and data Electronic medicine administration Any other type of administration besides electronic In order to answer the research question which was specifically focusing on finding the “the impact of electronic medicine administration in reduction of medication errors in pediatric intensive health care in the UK” Adult intensive care unit Any other health care besides pediatric intensive In order to answer the research question which was specifically focusing on finding the “the impact of electronic medicine administration in reduction of medication errors in pediatric intensive health care in the UK” Studies carried out in UK Studies carried out in any other country besides UK The research question was aiming to find out the impact of electronic medicine administration in reduction of medication errors in Adult intensive care unit in the UK Therefore, all the studies used for this assignment must be in UK Ethically approved studies Non ethically studies Ethically approved studies need to be used in order to ensure all the findings were ethically evaluated This is important when maintaining code of ethics during the research Full and complete articles will be used Abstract only, half articles Full information helps to analyze the research question in depth from all aspects and hence provides a balanced view point Month Activity 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Data collection Proposal writing Data analysis Arranging and recording data Writing the research paper Paper submission and dissemination Time frame of the research project Read More