Medications Errors and the Nurse\'s Role in Preventing These Errors

¶ … 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, applying eye drops to the wrong eye, and using incorrect IV tubes for medication administration (unknown, AORN)."

Errors and Children

A study conducted recently found that "one of every ten children treated in U.S. 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 error is caught before the patient is affected, then there is no need to report the error. Nurses are also afraid of repercussions which may occur due to the error (unknown, Nursing).

Efforts have been made to change these misconceptions, resulting in "a strong upsurge in the number of medication errors reported in the MEDMARX database, which is a positive step toward identifying and eliminating medication errors and ensuring the safety and well-being of hospital patients (unknown, AORN)."

When examining the "192,477 medication errors documented by MEDMARX in 2002, the vast majority were corrected before patients were harmed; however, patient injury resulted from 3,213. Of this number, 514 errors required initial or prolonged hospitalization, 47 required interventions to sustain life, and 20 resulted in a patient's death. Compared with 2001 data, a smaller percentage of reported errors resulted in harm to the patient (unknown, AORN)."

Errors in administering medications such as morphine, insulin and heparin are responsible for the majority of harm to patients.

Nurse's Responsibility

The nurse plays a major role in the prevention of medication errors. While reporting errors can prevent a reoccurrence of an incident, the nurse can prevent an error completely by following a few simple rules. These rules include assuring it is the correct patient, medication, route of administration, dosage, and time for administration; knowing the patient's drug allergies; checking for drug interactions, and knowing what the drug is used for as well as possible side effects.