Medication Errors



Medication Errors

Introduction

Many of the practitioners of the health care have been aware of the dilemma of the medication errors from a long time. It is only just with the publication of the report in 1999 by the (IOM) Institute of Medicine that the general population has come to understand the amount to which the medication errors put them at danger. The report of the IOM i.e. “To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System” emphasized the shocking figures about the extent of the dilemma.

In these facts, the medication errors are the 8th leading ponder of the demises in the United States of America, with the amount of expires surpassing the numbers that are linked with the AIDS, breast cancer and motor vehicle accidents. In the hospital setting the medication errors symbolize the major distinct reason of the errors that accounts for 7000 bereavements and above per year, which is more than the amount of demises that results from the injuries of workplace (Protocare Sciences, 2001).

Exclusively, the medication errors are any avoidable and avertable events that can lead or cause to the unsuitable patient harm or medication use. However, the medication is in the command of the consumer, patient or health care professional. These kinds of events can be connected to the health care products, professional practice, systems, and procedures. These procedures comprise of product labeling, prescribing, packaging, order communication, compounding, distribution, nomenclature, dispensing, education, monitoring, administration, and use (FDA, 2013).

Collecting the facts from the United States and other places specifies that during the stay in hospitals a substantial amount of the patients experience undesirable and unfavorable events like the nosocomial infection, injurious falls, medication errors, and various other misadventures of medical. The fluid or medication related errors were second only to the errors of surgery as the most widespread kind of such events.

Discussion

History of Medication Errors

Recently the matter of the medication errors has gained a great national concentration and notice than in early times due to the awareness by the physicians to this subject. On the medication errors, the pharmacists have an extended history of carrying out research. This research begins from 40 years ago with a study that showed that the errors are an immense dilemma than other identified problems.

In a survey, the effectiveness and efficacy of the voluntary and incident reports were compared to direct the surveillance of the nurses for the methods of error detection. In this study, during the first year, 36 errors were acknowledged by the incident reports. Two weeks' worth of data, by comparison, that was composed by the direct surveillance over the same one year period when checked specified that about 51,200 errors may have happened which also comprises of the 600 wrong time errors (Flynn, 2000). This amount of errors is almost 1,422 times of the errors that were recognized by the incident reports.

The history of the terminology and definition utilized when the medication errors are discussed is significant to be alert when assessing the ...