NURSING

Medication errors, leadership and management in nursing

Medication errors, leadership and management in nursing

Introduction

Leadership and management in nursing is the most key element. Leadership and management are skills that are learned. Nurses are responsible for treating patients and taking proper care of them; however, they too can commit medication errors because they are human. Nurses do not have a margin of error, because their one slight mistake can prove to be disastrous for someone's life. Medication errors can even cause deaths, which is why the staff has to take extra care of every patient. This paper will discuss all these three topics in detail (Murray & Langan, 2010).

Medication Errors

Medication errors are broadly defined as the errors that occur if any of the three stages; prescribing, dispensing or administration. Errors can be committed in any of the three stages, and if they are prevented they can be a big source of protecting patients from harm. A huge proportion of deaths that occur every year are because of medication errors. Reckless behavior is the first reason why many patients die (Tomey, 2009). They are medicated in a hurry, and no attention is paid to the medication that is being given which causes their death.

There are three main types of medication errors:

1.Prescribing Errors

The ratio of prescribing errors is the highest among the medication errors. Of the total number of medication errors, half of them are caused by prescribing errors alone. People prescribing medicines are very young and inexperienced which causes this rate to increase. The young medical staff and fresh medical graduates are the fundamental culprits of prescribing errors. Prescribing errors occur due to lack of knowledge, prescribing the wrong dose or medicine, inappropriate knowledge of patients' medical history etc. Steps should be taken to reduce the risk of prescription errors (Williams, 2007). It can be reduced by providing appropriate training to the junior staff, introducing electronic prescription, which will eliminate the risk of prescription error due to illegible handwriting.

2.Dispensing Errors

Dispensing errors can occur anywhere between the prescription stage and the stage where patients utilize the medicine. Dispensing errors include confusion of the name of the medicine, intake of wrong dose, medicating the wrong person or utilizing the wrong drug. These errors can be reduced and rectified. Dispensing errors cause a small percentage of the entire medication errors, but still steps should be taken to eliminate such errors. Dispensing errors can be reduced by ensuring ...