Progress Made in Medication Safety Practices

Medical Safety

Poor medical safety practices result in over 40,000 deaths per year, of that 7,000 deaths are attributed to medication-related medical errors. There is no excuse for negligence when it comes to human lives. It is imperative that the medical community introduce sound medication safety best practices to eliminate adverse outcomes related to medication prescriptions. Best practices include the implementation of standardization and protocols in addition to the use of technology to reduce errors.

Medical Safety Practices

Medical practitioners are relied upon to provide solutions, acting as the first and many times, last hope of those in dire need. But despite this great responsibility to patients whose lives are entrusted in medical staff studies show that out of every 100 patients admitted to a medical facility 2 patients will experience a medical error due to incorrectly prescribed or administered medication. The results can be mild but can also be a severe as death. We simply can not tolerate risking lives due to occurrences that are preventable. While no humans, even those who practice medicine are infallible, this is one area that anything less than perfection is simply unacceptable. The good news is the medical community is making great strides in identifying root causes of preventable medication-related safety failures. The forward goal is implementing solutions and best practices to reduce and if possible completely eliminate these occurrences. As a clinician, this topic is of utmost importance to me both personally and professionally. I prescribe medications daily in an effort to help my patients. Avoiding preventable mistakes that might harm my patients is necessary. This paper will discuss the implications and history of medical safety errors in U.S. medical facilities and explore current progress and initiatives to eliminate these avoidable areas and save human lives.

Physicians have pledged to do no harm-as implied in the Hippocratic Oath. This is one of the reasons why medical safety is of utmost importance, a patient should never leave a medical facility in worse condition than he or she entered due to a preventable error. The medical community prescribes 3.2 million prescriptions per year in the U.S. alone in an effort to help our patients recover and have a better quality of life. Out of those 3.2 million prescriptions, 7,000 people will die from poor medication safety practices!

Our patients are not disposable; we can no longer afford to simply turn a blind eye to medical safety failures which result in thousands of unnecessary deaths each year. These deaths are not merely the cost of doing business or mistakes that should be accepted as inevitable. Patients and their families trust the medical community with their lives, the alarming rate of medical failures requires swift and deliberate action to eliminate frivolous deaths. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention more people die as a result of medical errors than breast cancer and AIDS. The medical community has an opportunity to save lives by implementing safer medication safety practices.

A primary motivator for pursuing a career in the medical field was and is to help others. My goal is to provide others with a better quality of life as no longer are we doomed because of a unfavorable medical diagnosis thanks to huge advances in medical technology. The entire community of medical practitioners has a huge impact on people, families, communities and larger society. We've made such great strides in research and development, in technology and patient care yet still loose lives to frivolous and negligent medication practices. As a clinician, it is my continuous pursuit of process improvement that unequivocally leads me to believe that better practices to eliminate medication-related errors are a quick-win for a very preventable problem.

Over the past decade, efforts have been made to define and measure medical related errors. A huge problem has been indentified to the tune of $2 billion dollars a year which represents the cost of preventable medication related errors. Since identifying these serious problems, several valid solutions have been proposed and implemented in many medical establishments. Standardization and use of new technology to improve accuracy have proven to be excellent weapons in the fight against medication related errors.

Standard Protocols and Procedures

Standard protocols and procedures is an effective way to begin to eliminate common mistakes. Standardizing the way in which work is performed and managed within a medical establishment is the low-hanging fruit in the quest to improve medication-related errors. Standardizing protocols, devices and procedures amongst medical facilities across the nation will allow our healthcare provider system to run as a well-oiled machine. Reducing variation in processes, policies, procedures and devices across the board will allow for increased precision and delivery of services without defects. Standardization allows for controllable treatment procedures with predictable and repeatable outcomes.

Technology to Improve Accuracy

Dosing errors can be eliminated through the use of technology. Dosing errors include administration, prescribing and dispensing errors. Prescriptions written in one unit such as micrograms and calculated in another unit (such as milligrams) is a very preventable error. Tools such as the CPOE or Computerized Physician Order-Entry System which allows orders to be written directly into the computer and transcribed to the pharmacy and the Automated Dispensing Cabinets (ADC) which has an automated dispensing system with frequently used medications in patient-care areas have proven to be great in reducing dosing errors. Nearly 60% of hospitals in the United States use the ADC process (Grissinger & Globus, 2004). CPOE has also shown positive results and is responsible decreasing medication errors by 40% in facilities it has been used.