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Impacts of Managing Medication Errors on Patient Safety
Solomon Vumomsi Chikelem
Titilayo Susan Ogunniyi
Rasmussen University
NUR2668; Role, Scope, Quality, and Leadership in Professional Nursing
Professor: Amy Voight
April 24, 2022
Impacts of Managing Medication Errors on Patient Safety
Medicines are used across the globe as means of treating various diseases. As the disease burden increases, medication use increases considerably, increasing the risk of medication errors. Medication error is a significant health concern that undermines patients’ safety and the professionalism of healthcare providers (Robertson & Long, 2018). All patients using medications are at risk of medication errors if proper interventions and measures are not implemented to ensure medications are administered to suitable patients (Alsaleh et al., 2021). Electronic Health Records with at least two patient identifiers positively impact medication errors, although the full benefits have not been realized. The use of the five rights of medication administration reduces medication errors. This paper aims to discuss the impacts of medication error reduction through the effective use of the five rights of medication to patients’ safety.
Medication Errors
Medication errors refer to preventable events that lead to patient harm or inappropriate use of medication while the medication is controlled by the consumer or healthcare provider (US Food and Drug Administration, 2019). Medication errors undermine health outcomes and patient safety, evidenced by mortality, morbidity, re-admissions, and prolonged stay in hospital. Medication errors are costly and negatively impact both healthcare providers and patients (Alsaleh et al., 2021). The clients’ needs are to receive quality care services to improve their health and well-being. All patients have confidence that healthcare providers will restore their health equilibrium but not worsen their health conditions by prescribing the wrong medication or proper medication to the wrong person (Robertson & Long, 2018).
Most studies that have investigated the impacts of clients’ needs in the healthcare setting have found that the significant needs of patients are self-care, confidence, communication, support, and education (Robertson & Long, 2018). All these needs cannot be achieved with medication errors. The consequences of medication errors to patients include the development of complications, slowed recovery, side effects such as skin disfigurement, rashes, itching, death, hospitalization, and re-admissions.
According to the US Food and Drug Administration (2019), more than 100,000 cases of medication errors are reported every year. Medication errors cause more than 9,000 deaths every year: Hundreds of patients suffer from severe side effects but fail to report it in health settings due to fear of being administered with other wrong medications (FDA, 2019). The US healthcare system spends $40 billion every year to provide care to patients with medication-associated errors. In addition, medication errors worsen the disease burden as victims of medication errors experiences suffering, physical pain, and psychological pain. Medication errors undermine health outcomes and patient satisfaction (Robertson & Long, 2018). High cases of patients dissatisfaction necessitate the need to increase on-job training to ensure healthcare providers are educated on the importance of using the five rights of medication to restore nurse-patient trust.
The Goal of the Project
The project’s goal is to educate healthcare providers on the importance of following the “five rights” of medication administration to reduce medication errors. Medication errors undermine patient safety due to resulting complications and side effects.
Target Audience
The target audience for this project proposal is healthcare workers. Medication errors occur in medication use, from describing them to transcribing and finally to administering or dispensing; the existing studies have revealed that most medication errors occur in the hands of nurses: during the administration phase. Nurses spend 40% of their time administering medication to patients (Wondmieneh et al., 2020). Medication errors increase due to incompliance with the five rights of medication and other contributing factors such as technical errors and wrong documentation. One of the effective strategies for improving patient safety is interrupting the wrong process before medications are given to patients by using all rights of medication administration (FDA, 2019). Therefore, all healthcare providers working in a healthcare setting will be trained on the importance of complying with the five rights of medication administration to reduce medication errors and improve patient safety.
The target audience was selected because healthcare providers play responsibilities and roles during medication administration. Since healthcare providers are the final person to check whether medication is correctly prescribed before passing it to the patient, it is essential to educate them on the importance of complying with all safety practices and the “five rights” of medication administration (FDA, 2019).
Benefits of the Project
The intervention will be used to educate healthcare providers on the five rights of medication administration. The right drug, correct route, right dose, right patient, and right time are recommendations for reducing medication errors (Jones & Treiber, 2018). The project’s benefits will help reduce the harmful effects of medication errors such as congenital disabilities, deaths, disability, life-threatening complications, severe side effects, and hospitalizations (2019). The project’s benefits will be realized by training healthcare providers on each of the following rights of medication administration. The first “right” is the proper medication. The first “right” will help the healthcare provider to ascertain that the patient being treated is the same patient the medication is being prescribed. In other to avoid confusion, the patient with other patients will be trained to use more than two identifiers, such as identification numbers, full names, and place of residence (Wondmieneh et al., 2020). Success in this will reduce correct medication administration to the wrong patients. It will also help healthcare providers learn practical practices for identifying patients correctly in the Electronic Health Records.
The second “right” is the right drug. In this, healthcare providers will be educated on the importance of labeling medication, separating medication with identical drug names, storage of containers, and writing the genetic names of medication instead of the drug name. The importance of complying with the above approaches is to reduce confusion which increases medication errors (Jones & Treiber, 2018). Reminding healthcare providers of the importance of proper storage, handling, and labeling of medication will reduce medication errors, thus, improving patient safety and overall health outcomes. The other “right” is the correct route. Medications are prescribed to patients using many routes such as oral, topical, intravenous, and intramuscular (Wondmieneh et al., 2020). Medication administration is a complex process, especially with newly developed medication. Training healthcare providers about currently developed medication, time of drug onset, best administration route, physiology of drug absorption rate, and rate of drug onset reduces medication errors (Jones & Treiber, 2018).
The other “right” is the right time. Healthcare providers will be educated on the need to avoid delay to ensure medication is prescribed at the required time possible. For instance, healthcare providers will be educated to ensure the drug administration time does not deviate from more than 30 minutes irrespective of patients available to prevent chemical mechanisms and altering bioavailability (Wondmieneh et al., 2020). Other training will focus on being careful with the correct medication rate when intravenous medications are involved. The other “right” is the correct dose. Healthcare providers will be introduced to current conversion units and concentration rates to avoid errors of incorrect dosage (Wondmieneh et al., 2020, p. xx). Therefore, compliance with the “five rights” of medication administration is beneficial in reducing medication errors, improving patient safety, and improving health outcomes.
Response
This nurse expects the response to be positive. Many cases of medication errors are unintentional occurrences. Training healthcare providers to identify error sources and the best strategies for avoiding them will ease their work during medication administration.
Conclusion
Medication error is a health concern that undermines patient safety and overall health outcomes. Moreover, preventing medication errors is associated with improving safety and health outcomes. The selected target audience is healthcare providers. The project’s goal is to educate healthcare providers on the “five rights” of medication administration to reduce medication errors, improve patient safety, and improve health outcomes. The project’s benefits will reduce the harmful effects of medication errors such as congenital disabilities, deaths, disability, life-threatening complications, severe side effects, and hospitalizations.
References
Alsaleh,F.M., Alsaeed,S., Alsairafi,Z.K., Almandil,N.B., Naser,A.Y., & Bayoud,T. (2021). Medication errors in secondary care hospitals in Kuwait: The perspectives of healthcare professionals.
Frontiers in Medicine,8.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2021.784315
Jones,J.H., & Treiber,L.A. (2018). Nurses’ rights of medication administration: Including authority with accountability and responsibility.
Nursing Forum,
53(3), 299-303.
https://doi.org/10.1111/nuf.12252
Robertson,J.J., & Long,B. (2018). Suffering in silence: Medication error and its impact on health care providers.
The Journal of Emergency Medicine,
54(4), 402-409.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jemermed.2017.12.001
US Food and Drug Administration. (2019).
Working to reduce medication errors. The US.gov.
https://www.fda.gov/drugs/information-consumers-and-patients-drugs/working-reduce-medication-errors
Wondmieneh,A., Alemu,W., Tadele,N., & Demis, A. (2020). Medication administration errors and contributing factors among nurses: A cross-sectional study in tertiary hospitals, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
BMC Nursing,
19(1).
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-020-0397-0
