Medication Errors Over Medication

Overmedication can be described as an inappropriate medical treatment that occurs when a patient takes unnecessary or excessive medications. This may happen because the prescriber is unaware of other medications the patient is already taking, because of drug interactions with another chemical or target population, because of human error, or because of undiagnosed medical conditions. Sometimes, the extra prescription is intentional (and sometimes illegal), as in the case of the use of excessive psychoactive medications as "chemical restraints" for elderly patients in nursing homes. The purpose of the research paper is to identify the root causes of overmedication and its effect on healthcare. It then goes on to identify the role that a nurse can play in elimination medication errors.

Root causes of Overmedication:

Overmedication is the misuse or prescription of medication in situations where less medication would be more beneficial to the patient. Patients are being vastly overmedicated for often relatively minor mental health concerns. This over-reliance on quick-fix medication is numbing the nation and dulling awareness of real and pressing social issues and of non-psychopharmacological therapies and treatments.

Overmedication is not a mechanical problem that can be easily corrected by new guidelines or procedures alone. It is a chronic problem which exists within both a cultural and economic framework. The cultural framework for overmedication is that people often want a "quick fix." The economic cause of overmedication is that prescription drugs generate huge profits, whereas most non-drug approaches (such as diet, exercise, rest, and some "alternative therapies") either generate no profit or very low ones. The profit motive introduces a huge incentive for the pharmaceutical industry to shape the culture surrounding medicine as much as possible, mainly through advertising.

Doctors and other healthcare professionals are inundated with promotional materials for...

Even when doctors think they are doing a good job of sorting through or filtering out this material, the fact is that they are exposed to a lot of material about the latest prescription medications, whereas they are exposed to much less about nutrition, movement-based therapies, herbal therapies, lifestyle-change treatments, or alternative therapies.
Another important instance of overmedication occurs when consumers are prescribed OTC drugs which produce the same or similar therapeutic effects. For example, overmedication can occur when a prescription drug like "Vicodin," which contains both "hydrocodone" and acetaminophen, is taken along with the nonprescription product Tylenol, which contains acetaminophen as the active ingredient. As a result, medications may accumulate at higher levels, causing undesired side effects, sometimes serious, even fatal (Deene, 2009).

Patients also become part of the problem to the degree to which they become sucked into the culture that looks to drugs for the answers. Patients can often pressure their doctor to prescribe something, which can result in a doctor reluctantly prescribing a medication when in reality they may be leaning against the choice of prescribing drugs.

Impact on healthcare:

The use of multiple, often unnecessary medications especially among older people is an entrenched, escalating, frightening, and mostly unexamined problem in modern health care. Although medications can ease many conditions, multiple-drug use often exacerbates existing ailments and causes troubling side effects that are treated with yet more drugs. Symptoms of overmedication occur gradually. Often, they are chalked up to "growing older." Fatigue, confusion, dizziness, weakness, memory loss, loss of balance, impotence, constipation, slowed reaction: speech, movement and thought, sleeplessness, unsteady gait, uncontrollable repetitive movement of the tongue, feet, hands and hallucinations are only a few side effects of overmedication. Perhaps one of the…