Factors leading to Medication errors
Health is one of the vital elements in the life of every individual, which determines the maintenance of the stability and constancy required to function properly. In a broader sense, it can be described as the condition of homeostasis representing stability or balance in the system. The human body attempts to maintain a constant internal environment. The report brings about the analysis of the understanding of the medication errors in the healthcare and their impact on the patient safety. Healthcare provides services to the patients throughout the world to the people who are ill and assist them to stay fit. However, sometimes they fail to meet the safety standards and lead to medication errors (Mayo clinic, 2018).
Health care services aim to provide safe and high quality care to the patients, but nowadays, these health care are not safe for the individuals. Medication errors are the common and major issue represented in the health care settings. Medications are offered by the health care services to their patients for the treatment of their illness. With the considerable and increasing use of medications the risk of harm to the patients multiplies. Any controllable event that may lead to the inappropriate medication use or the harm to the patient. It occurs while the medication is under the control of health care professional, patient or the consumer. These events may include any professional practice, health care product, or systems used in the procedure. It describes that the errors of medication are preventable at different levels (Makary and Daniel, 2016).
There are certain factors which causes the occurrence of medication errors. The errors are the results of the faults and mistakes of the doctors and the nurses in the health care. It affects a large number of people thereby increasing the health care costs (Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health care, 2017).
As humans are fallible so the errors are inevitable, two issues always prevail and should not be overlooked. It states that even the best and experienced people are prone to errors; and the errors fall into concurrent patterns. The individual factors which interpret the mistakes committed by doctors, nurses, and their relationship with the medication errors. It involves miscommunication between the patients and the nurse, wrong reading of the medication package, miscalculation, and non-adherence to the prescribed steps for the intake of the medicine (Prashanth, et.al, 2015).
Factor 1- INDIVIDUAL FACTORS
The approach in the organisational factors provides a holistic view of the issues in the medication errors. It concentrates on the presence of a number of factors in the healthcare system leading to medication errors. Furthermore, these factors can be sub-categorised by describing the relationship between the working environment and the medication errors. The interruptions/distraction, heavy workload, high or inappropriate nurse patient ratio, new staff and lack of the understanding of the medication in the healthcare are some of negative impacts of these errors (Karavasiliadou and Athanasakis, 2014).
These include the factors causing medication errors related to the lack of prescribing technical support in handling the processes for generation of first prescription. It includes the drug pick lists, missed alerts, and the lack of maintenance of the patient records. Also, the inadequate knowledge of the patients and the insufficient resource are other reasons causing medication errors (Parry, Barriball, and While, 2015).
Healthcare organisations promote adjustments in the patient care procedures and processes, the impacts on the patients (positive or negative) must be explored. Safety is the major concern of the patient’s health and wellbeing. It may disturb their stability and lead to other diseases and the problems. However, patient safety is a subject that covers all the medical specialities and impacts healthcare professionals. Therefore, it is essential to carefully analyse the medications given to the patients which are error-free (Dekker, 2016).
The implications of the medication errors on patients can be studied in different dimensions that include any physical, emotional, financial, and personal effects. These may range from any notable effect leading to death, also affect the patient’s ringing in the ear, hypotension, itching, and others. These effects can be temporary or permanent in the patient’s life. Other than the physical loss to safety of the patient, emotional and financial loss also effect considerably. It includes, stress, anger, self-doubt, the sense of self-blame, or the fear of taking medicines in the future.
Financial threat to the safety of the patient, include insurance co-pays, loss of wages, disability costs, childcare costs. Moreover, some personal factors exert influence to a great degree, which include decreased morale of the longer time-period of stay, altered beliefs in the benefits from the intake of medications. These factors affect the overall attitude and loss of confidence in the healthcare system (Van Cott, 2018).
There are some strategies or ways to prevent the occurrence of the harm to the patient’s safety. It is the responsibility of the management to develop the culture of safety and robust-error reporting system in the workplace. Also, ensuring a no-blame culture in the organisation would help preventing harm to the patients (NCBI, 2018).
Factor 2- ORGANISATIONAL FACTORS
Conclusion
To conclude the above discussion for the clinical practice in a healthcare setting, it has been found humans are incapable of the perfect performance in treating and giving medications to their patients. Along with the human errors there are some factors also which leads to the medication errors. To discuss the prevention of medication errors, as a registered nurse three strategies can be implemented in this case.
In a clinical medical practice a nurse play a great role in the prevention of medication errors, the first strategy can be ensuring about the five rights of the medication administration. It is associated with compliance to the policies of medication transcription. This includes elements such as right patient, drugs, time, dose and the route while giving medication.
The strategy mentions about the practices which review and compares the medication administration record and the record of the patient at the beginning of the nurse shifts. Also, the knowledge base of the nurse with respect to the medication is considered important; thus ensuring familiarity.
As a nurse, in the healthcare it is essential to keep the legible documentation and proper recording of the medication associated with the patient. This might be helpful in ensuring a further check by another nurse or physician. Moreover, along with the documents, a nurse must keep a drug guide as a reference to provide information regarding drug –to-drug instructions, dosing, side effects/nursing, cautionary related to the drug intake. Hence, the above mentioned factors and strategies related to medication errors suggest about development of advanced and highly systematic healthcare systems.
References
Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health care (2017) Australia joins international joins international push to halve medication errors [online] Available from: https://www.safetyandquality.gov.au/media_releases/australia-joins-international-push-to-halve-medication-errors/ [Accessed 19/08/18].
Dekker, S. (2016) Patient safety: a human factors approach. United States: CRC Press.
Karavasiliadou, S. and Athanasakis, E. (2014) An inside look into the factors contributing to medication errors in the clinical nursing practice. Health Science Journal, 8(1), 100-189.
Makary, M.A., and Daniel, M. (2016) Medical error—the third leading cause of death in the US. Bmj, 353, p. 2139.
Mayo clinic (2018) Medication errors: Cut your risk with these tips. [online] Available from: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/consumer-health/in-depth/medication-errors/art-20048035 [Accessed 19/08/18].
NCBI (2018) Errors in Health care: A leading cause of death and injury. [online] Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK225187/ [Accessed 19/08/18].
Parry, A.M., Barriball, K.L. and While, A.E. (2015) Factors contributing to Registered Nurse medication administration error: A narrative review. International journal of nursing studies, 52(1), pp. 403-420.
Prashanth, L., Kattapagari, K.K., Chitturi, R.T., Baddam, V.R.R., and Prasad, L.K. (2015) A reviews on role of essential trace elements in health and disease. Journal of Dr. Ntr University of health sciences, 4(2), p.75
Van Cott, H. (2018) Human errors: Their causes and reduction. In Human error in medicine pp. 53-65. United States: CRC Press.
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