...“One-third of all medication errors causing harm to hospitalized patients occur in the medication preparation and administration phase… (Smeulers, Verweij, Maaskant, Boer, Krediet, Nieveen van Dijkum & Vermeulen, 2015). Even though medication administration safety measures have been applied as healthcare continues to grow, there are still errors made. Safety measures have been implemented over the years in attempt to be thoroughly safe as one can be. However, administration of medications is still a target point for health care errors, as the nurse still must critically think before administering a medication to a patient. Using the Donabedian Model, structure is the first level to be examined to seek improvement in medication administration safety. Some examples of the structure level are facility, equipment, and staff and their qualifications (Shi & Singh, 2015). When discussing medication...
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...SCENARIO ANALYSIS According to the Medication Administration Process, there is a step missing from the scenario. The steps missing are Step 3, Step 4, Step 6, Step 7, Step 8, and Step 9. All these measures of accurate Medication Administration Process can be realized to be missing from the scenario due to what the nurse did or did not do, did right or wrong, at the right time or not. Some errors occurred during the Medication Administration Process in the scenario. The first error is that the unit clerk communicates the medication order to the nurse verbally while it should be written or typed. When a medication order is typed, it rarely leads to misunderstanding or errors. The second error is when the nurse takes medication from bin number...
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...The main professional goal of nurses is to provide and improve human health. Unfortunately, medication errors are amongst the most common health threatening mistakes that affect patient care. Medication errors occur when nurses fail to comply with the rules. Some medication errors may result in no harm to the patient’s outcome, while others have the potential to cause serious harmful effects (Slade, 2013). There are many factors that are mostly reversible that can lead to medication error. These factors include failure to adhere to policy and procedure of documentations, lack of knowledge on medications and lack of staffing. Therefore, the purpose of this essay is to elaborate on the factors that contribute to medication errors and how to reduce the errors to prevent any reoccurrence as medication error can be fatal. Administration of medication is an important aspect of the professional practice. It is not solely a mechanistic...
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...Flowchart for Inpatient Medication Administration Name: Institutional Affiliation: Flowchart for Inpatient Medication Administration Introduction The medication administration process has a direct impact on the patient’s health and well-being. The evaluation of the medication administration workflow is crucial to ensure that the right procedure is utilized to offer quality care. The proper design of the process makes sure that there is provision of safe, efficient, prompt, and patient-centered care. Also, there is the elimination of cases of medication administration errors in hospitals through the appropriate workflow design. The application of technological elements in the process with proper integration serves to enhance...
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...Improving The Safety Of Using Medications In Hospital Settings Background Improving the safety of using medications was the third Joint Commission safety goal for 2014 (Hospital National Patient Safety Goals, n.d.). Every year medication errors are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in hospitals. Simply put, medication errors come from incorrect dosing by physicians on prescriptions, administration of the wrong dose of the prescribed medication to the patient, failure of the healthcare provider to administer prescribed medication, or failure of the patient to ingest said prescribed medication (Choo, J., Hutchinson, A., & Bucknall, T., 2010). Role of the Nurse According to the Journal of Nursing Management, nurses should practice the five rights of administration that they are taught while in school. Those rights are: right medication, right dose, right route, right time, and right patient (Choo, J., Hutchinson, A., & Bucknall, T., 2010). While checking the five rights is useful in the final stages of the administration process, the rights do not reflect the other complex steps to medication administration, such as preparation, labeling, determining interaction, etc. Normally medication errors are never the result of an isolated human error. They may come from workplace stress, distractions, interruptions, insufficient training, and misinformation (Choo, J., Hutchinson, A., & Bucknall, T., 2010). The individual nurse should make sure that...
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...Prevention of Medication Errors in Nursing Practice Breton Sloop NU 332 Foundations of Nursing November 11, 2015 Teresa Faust Mary is a critical care nurse at a busy urban hospital, who is trying to catch up on her morning medication administrations. Her patient had required several procedures that morning, due to an alteration in his condition, and now Mary is behind schedule. The patient is intubated, so she decides to crush the pills, and administer them through his nasogastric tube. The patient’s medication is already late, but in her dash to give the medication as quickly as possible, she fails to notice the “Do Not Crush” warning on the electronic medication administration record (MAR). She then crushes an extended-release calcium...
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...To provide safe drug administration, the nurse should practice the “rights” of drug administration. They are: 1. The right client 2. The right drug 3. The right dose 4. The right time 5. The right route Experience indicates that five additional rights are essential to professional nursing practice; 1. The right assessment 2. The right documentation 3. The client’s right to education 4. The right evaluation 5. The client’s right to refuse The right client needs to be ensured by checking the wrist band, and by checking a second piece of identification. This could be a picture on the chart, or a case number that is both on his chart and wristband. This must be done before any medication is administrated. The right drug means that the client receives the drug that was prescribed by a physician (MD), dentist (DDS), podiatrist (DPM), or an advanced practice nurse with the license to write prescriptions (APRN). The use of computerized systems to record medications has helped to decrease medication errors, because nurses are not trying to read written forms of the prescriptions. Dr.’s can electronically add a new medication order to a pt. chart from any location. If there is a phone order or verbal order it must be cosigned by the prescribing physician within 24 hours. The components of a drug order are as follows: · Date and time the order is written · ...
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...importance in their role of medication administration. Pharmacology knowledge allows the nurse to carry out safe medication administration, monitor medication actions, educate patients, and act legally and ethically within the pharmacological parameters. This knowledge is also vital for the nurse practititioner in their role of nurse prescribing. Pharmacology plays a huge part in these roles for the nurse. This essay below will elaborate on the importance of pharmacology for the five reasons of safe medication administration, monitoring of medication actions, patient education, legal and ethical aspects of pharmacology and the nurse practitioner. Firstly, safe medication administration. To administer drugs safely it is the nurse’s responsibility to have knowledge of the prescribed medications as well as their therapeutic and non therapeutic effects. Knowledge of the medications include, knowing its approved drug name and classification, correct dose and route of administration. A medication may have as many as three different names- a chemical name, a generic (proprietary) name and a trade name (Crisp & Taylor, 2011). A chemical name refers to the chemical makeup of a drug, a generic name is the drug name listed in official publications such as the MIMS annual, and the trade name is the name manufacturers have registered the medication as. In a clinical setting medication is normally dispensed using the generic name to avoid confusion, but because medications may come under a number...
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...Medication Bar Code Scanning Bar Code Medication Administration (BCMA) system is a bar code system that was designed to prevent errors in medication administration, save time, give timely feedback, and improve patient safety in the health care field. Not only are these goals of the bar code medication scanning system, but it also improves accuracy and produces online records of the patient’s medication administration in their file (Weston & Roberts, 2013). The bar code scanning system has greatly impacted the medical field in many ways, especially nursing. In this paper, I will specifically be talking about how the bar code medication administration (BCMA) scanning system has impacted nursing, nursing care, and patient outcomes. I will...
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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...
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...the Electronic Medication Administration Record or E-MAR. The Electronic Medication Administration Record is a portable system used by nurses and clinicians while administering patient care. The E-MAR system can be used on a variety of portable devices such as PDAs, laptops and tablets. The system can also be accessed through a computer on a portable cart. The system is primarily used during medication passes, while taking patient vitals and during patient observation. The system is used for patient care in hospitals, clinics, nursing facilities, prison facilities and other settings where medical care is given. The E-MAR process uses bar coding on both patient wrist bands and single dose labels on medications. Each patient wears a wrist band with a barcode specific to that patient’s medical record....
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...Ethical and Legal Issues in Healthcare Clinical Reasoning Table of Contents Introduction 2 Ethical and Legal Issues in Medication Administration 2 Ethical Issue in the Case 3 Application of Tools 3 Conclusion 4 References 5 Introduction Mr Joe Bloggers has been introduced as a new patient for the unit. His admission had been made at 8:30 AM in the department of emergency departed from another hospital. His case was that he ended up falling on the stairs, five days before he had been admitted. He has been going through a period of struggle due to an increase of pain in his back. As per the reports drafted based on his X- Ray and CT scan, it has been found that there is a damage in his soft tissue but there is no sign of a fracture. In addition to this, he has a number of large bruises and the pain increases when there is movement. This particular essay will be discussing certain ethical and legal issues involved in the medication chart that had been drafted in the case of Mr Blogges. Ethical and Legal Issues in Medication Administration Before the administration of...
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...errors that can occur is medication errors. In fact, “preventable medication errors were responsible for 7000 deaths per year, and it is estimated that 3 to 6.9% of hospitalized patients experience a medication error” (Lilley, Collins, & Snyder, 2017, p. 63). It is important to understand the complexity of the medication administration process because medication errors seriously affect patient safety and can even cause death. The process of medication administration is complex and leaves significant room for error. The process starts with the provider giving the order for a certain medication. The provider or nurse must enter the order into the computer system correctly. The...
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... Final Project N311 Dr.Peggy Shipley Shannon McKnight 6/14/2014 2. Introduction According to the Institute of Medicine there are more than a million injuries and almost 100,000 deaths associated with medication administration errors every year in the healthcare profession. Administration of medication is a large part of every day nursing care. As the patient’s primary advocates, it is the nurse’s responsibility to make certain these medication errors do not occur and to uphold the patient’s safety. Hebda & Czar (2013) state, “The desire to reduce or eliminate medication errors focuses attention on computerized physician order entry (CPOE), Bar Code Medication Administration (BCMA), and e-prescribing”. With the growing amount of medication errors, many institutions are introducing the Bar Code Medication Administration System. This is a system that will aid in assuring the right patient is getting the right medication and reduce the risk for medication errors. Although BCMA will not be a remedy for medication errors, it can provide a safeguard that is not possible with manual method. The implementation of the Bar Code Medication Administration system has been highly proven reduce the number of medication errors, improve patient safety, and increase the nurse’s job satisfaction. 3. Barrier to the Implementation Understanding the barriers to change is one of the...
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...Wrong-time Medication Administration Errors NUR 45200 Quality and Safety for Professional Nursing Practice May 1st, 2016. Patient Safety/Quality Improvement Statement and Chosen Cause that will Drive Improvement Wrong-time medication administration error has been identified as one of the major components of medication errors committed my health care professionals especially nurses. Several factors or causes are responsible for this error, but nursing factor will be discussed in this essay focusing majorly on medications pass time insufficiency and med pass rule of 30 minute. Nurses are directly involved in medication administration and they can play a huge role in preventing or reducing wrong-time medication administration error. Current Knowledge of the Patient Safety Concern/Quality Improvement Issue Wrong-time medication administration error is the most common type of medication errors committed by nurses. It can simply be defined as failure to administer medications 30min before or after the due due/scheduled time. The last element of the 5 Rights -- right time -- has often been governed by the "30-minute medication rule." For as long as many nurses can remember, every hospital, unit, and nurse has passed medications by this rule, which says that a medication is "on time" if it is administered 30 minutes before or 30 minutes after the scheduled administration time (although some hospitals have policies that allow a 60-minute, rather than a 30-minute, window). Such...
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