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¶ … medication errors by nurses. There are six references for this paper.
Health care professionals are responsible for the welfare and safety of their patients. One of the most dangerous and preventable mistakes a nurse can make is a medication error. It is important to understand how errors occur, their repercussions and ways to prevent a medication error.
In order to prevent a medication error, a nurse must first understand how it is defined. A medication error is "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. 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 (http://www.fda.gov/cder/present/DIA62002/gross/sld014.htm)."
Causes
There are a number of factors which can contribute to medication errors. These factors include "incorrect administration technique, workplace distractions, staffing issues and workload increases (unknown, AORN)."
The most common cause for harmful medication errors is incorrect administration technique. This "error occurs when medications either are prepared incorrectly or administered incorrectly, or both. Examples include not diluting concentrated medications, crushing sustained-released medications,...
emergency departments may receive a wrong drug or dosage. Drug errors occur 1.5 to 2.5 more frequently when children receive care between 4 a.m. And 8 a.m. Or on weekends, or when they're being treated for a severe condition. Errors also occur more frequently when physicians in training order the medication (unknown, 2002)." The study also found acetaminophen, antihistamines, medications for asthma and antibiotics were the medications more likely to have an error when given.
Prevention
There are a number of ways to prevent medication errors in the health care field. "One of the most valuable strategies in the prevention of medication errors is the recognition that prescriber ordering, pharmacy dispensing, and the nursing administration processes actually reside in a larger medication-use system (Cohen)."
Some of the key elements of the system are "patient information, drug information, communication information, environmental factors, competency and staff education, and quality process and risk management (Cohen)."
Reporting Errors
In the past years, there has been an increase in the number of medication errors, however many of these errors go unreported. One of the main reasons for this is the fact that some nurses believe that if the…
References
Cohen, Hedy. (01 July, 2004). "Pediatric medical errors part 3: safety strategies: medication use system to analyze errors." Pediatric Nursing, pg 33.
Meadows, Ginny. (01 July, 2002). "Safeguarding patients against medication errors." Nursing
Economics."
(Medication errors defined. (accessed 04 September, 2005).
<http://www.fda.gov/cder/present/DIA62002/gross/sld014.htm>).
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