Medication Errors



Literature Review

Introduction

A medication error is the failure of the treatment that causes potential harm to the patients' health. Medication errors, which occur in the prescribing and administration of a medicine, are the preventable cause of patient harm. These errors occur at any stage. These medication errors cause 45,000 to 99,000 deaths in US hospitals every year (Spath, 2011). These errors can affect the patient confidence in the physicians and nurses. This also increase healthcare costs causing an additional burden of $5.6m per year (Spath, 2011).

These errors can cause significant mortality and morbidity as the dosing errors can aggravate the side effects, or inadequate dose can provide improper therapeutic effects. The dispensing errors can also aggravate the toxicity of various drugs. Medication errors are a serious problem in all health care settings as every medication error results in adverse effects for patients. No matter what type of medication error it is, every medication error is a serious problem as it can harm patients or endanger their life. It is essential to pay serious attention to this issue and develop strategies to eliminate or minimize medication errors in every health care setting (Spath, 2011). This paper would describe the causes and proposed solution of these medical errors by reviewing literature. It also describes about the theory that helps in providing proposed solution to these issues.

Discussion

Literature Review Regarding Medication Errors and Their Proposed Solution

The drug therapy is done to achieve the therapeutic outcomes to improve quality of life and to minimize patient risk. The medication errors can occur due to wrong patient, wrong drug, wrong route, wrong dose, and wrong time. The article by Kaushal, et. al., (2001) describes the rates of medication errors and their adverse events to determine the types of errors, and to evaluate prevention strategies. They reviewed 778 medication orders and found 5.7% of medication errors. They found that there are chances of medication errors at the rate of 5 per 100 orders. They found that 1.1% were potential ADEs , out of the 19% errors were preventable. They found that the adverse drug events occurred on drug ordering stage were 79% , this included incorrect dosing and intravenous medications administration. The computerized physician order system prevented 92% of potential ADEs.

The article by Ammenwerth, et. al., (2008) describes the risk reduction related to computerized physician order entry. They showed that by using this system risk reduction of 13% to 99% can be achieved in medication errors. They analysed 25 studies and found that 23 studies showed a risk reduction of 99% when electronic prescribing was used . They compared the effects of handwriting prescribing and electronic prescribing. They concluded that electronic prescribing reduced the risk of medication errors in all studies, showing high-level of efficiency.

The article by Tam, et. al., (2005) provided a meta-analysis of the studies related to the mediation errors. They analysed 22 studies and 3755 patients. They showed that prescription errors occurred in 67% of cases, 10% were the omission errors, ...