Medication error



Implementation Plan

Introduction

It is evident from international literature, that medication errors and adverse drug effects pose serious risks to health of patients. In US, it causes harm to 1.5 million patients and 400 000 adverse events every year. Management of these medication errors are costly for healthcare systems and for the patients ((Pagilari, Detmer, & Singleton, 2007).

Prevention of these medication errors has become essential to prevent patients from adverse drug effects. Systems that implement computerized physician order entry, education of health care staff, automated dispensing cabinets, and electronic medication reconciliation are more successful in preventing the medication errors. Hospitals with computerized systems have fewer complications and lower costs. The following paper describes the plan that should be implemented in the health care organization to minimise the risk of complications and to prevent medication errors.

Discussion

Population for which the Solution Is Indented

The system of organization should be designed in such a way to monitor the ordering of drugs, dispensing, and administering to minimize error. The system must involve prescribers, doctors, nurses, and pharmacists.

Approval for the Plan

For approval of the plan, proper gathering of data would be done from the staff, doctors and senior health care workers. After gathering the facts, all figures would be evaluated and documented. The summary of the facts would be made and then the proposed solution would also be documented. Help from other health care workers would be taken such as pharmacist. The proposed solution would then be presented to higher authorities, such as nursing leaders in organization. After their approval, the documents would be forwarded to directors and senior management personnel. These people would analyse the documents and then, if the plan would be approved, application for funds for this plan would be forwarded. The higher authorities would be shown the effectiveness of the plan in preventing medication errors.

Current Issues and Deficits

In our setups, all types of medication errors occur. These errors occur at ordering of drugs, dispensing, and administering of drugs. The nurses and healthcare staff lack proper information about the drug preparation, administration and dose. The pharmacists do not have proper knowledge about the patient. The physician use sloppy handwriting and abbreviations, which are difficult to understand and cause medication errors. The system does not have computerized system to avoid the chances of human errors. The medication errors occur at all stages; therefore, the proposed solutions should involve all these personnel and processes to minimize medication errors in the system.

Proposed Solution

Nurses Training

Nurses who are working in wards or any other setups, should be educated by lectures, workshops, booklets or other methods about drug preparations, route, dosing, frequency and drug interactions. These all activities can be done by senior nurses and physicians. They must be trained to confirm all the drug orders before administration and to confirm it with the drug that is dispensed. Nurses should check and confirm it with physicians regarding its route and frequency. They must be trained to see the expiry data before administration of every ...