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Medication Errors

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Medication Errors
Stephanie Stephens
January 9, 2016
NU1426
ITT TECH

Nurses must always follow the six rights of medication administration thoroughly to ensure patient safety. These rights include right medication, right route, right time, right client, right dosage, and right documentation. When one of these rights is not followed a medication error has occurred and must be reported immediately. Medication error prevention is vital in the role of the nurse.
There were many contributing factors leading to this medication error and there are many ways to avoid medications errors. Looking at the reasons why medications occur helps the nurse understand what areas to be most vigilant. The main areas of medication errors are distractions/ interruptions, medication education, interpretation of an order and poor calculations. Patients during their time in the hospital will receive medications.
Distractions will occur throughout a nurses shift, losing concentration at the task at hand can lead to serious and harmful mistakes. It is important for the nurse to let her surrounding nurses know when she/he is pulling medications so that there isn't any distractions. Also, a quiet environment when taking telephone orders so that the order can be heard clearly and dictation from the provider is understood. Another medication administration error prevention for the nurse is to allow for delegation and to not take on to much. When a nurse is in the process of administering medication, beginning to end, is that she/he is not interrupted, letting others know not to ask for anything and that nurse will available in a short while but not during medication process.
Medication education is important not only for the nurse but also for the client that the medication is being administered to. The nurse needs to know the mechanism of action for the medication being

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