Medication Error

Medication Errors

Introduction

Medicines are used to cure diseases and to reduce or control health problems. However, it is the medicines that can also harm one's health, if not used correctly. In fact, improper medications are also a significant cause of medical errors that impact patients' health. These errors are not only limited to prescription but also include negligence and faults in dispensing and administration of medication. No doubt, there are various reasons that cause medication errors including heavy workload on nurses, lack of communication and poor management in nursing. However, it is nurse's responsibility to understand their role and to avoid those circumstances that lead to medication errors. The role of communication is also essential in nursing as it enable a nurse to not only perform perfect assessment but also to provide perfect care with right medicines at right time. This paper aims to discuss and understand the nature of medication errors and their prevention strategies that can reduce or eliminate these errors (Spath, 2011).

Discussion

Setting in Which These Medication Errors are Observed

Most of these errors are observed in acute care settings, where the patients need urgent treatment and health care staff faces heavy workloads.

Common factors related to Medication Errors

Lack of knowledge.

Lack of information.

Transcription errors.

Drug identification errors.

Dosing errors.

Infusion pump delivery error.

Preparation error (Cohen, 2006).

Dispensing Errors

These types of errors occur during physician's prescription or when nurses start giving medicines to patients. Dispensing errors mainly occur due to any confusion or improper knowledge of medicine names, intake of improper dose and use of wrong drug. However, these errors are also as serious as other medication errors. In fact, dispensing errors can be eliminated by implementing effective dispensing procedures, identification of drug of similar names, and managing workload of nursing staff (Cohen, 2006).

Administration Errors

Most of the administration errors occur due to negligence of nursing staff. It is a fact, that doctor's main job is to examine and prescribe appropriate treatment. It is the responsibility of nurse and other staff to look after the patient's health. However, negligence is usually found at this stage when nurses do not take right and required care of their patients or do not give them medicines on time (Cohen, 2006). The first thing to reduce such errors are the need of proper training of nursing and other support staff to increase their awareness and knowledge related to administrative procedures (Murray & Langan, 2010).

Gravity of These Errors

According to several studies as we have discussed below, that the rates of these medication errors are high. These errors are related to dosing, frequency, route, timming and preparation (Cohen, 2006). It is also important to understand that nurses do not bear the sole responsibility of prescribing errors. In fact, doctors are also responsible for making errors. It has been seen that medication errors occurs due to limited knowledge and wrong information about patient's history. However, prescribing errors can be controlled or reduced by giving comprehensive training to nursing staff as well as physicians (Williams, ...