Administration of Medication Error

Administration of Medication Error Name Institution Administration of Medication Error Introduction Patient safety is one of the key concerns for health care organizations and practitioners as it embraces the purpose or desired outcome of providing care to those in need of medical attention for their diverse health problems. The health care practitioners or nursing care providers are usually at the forefront in ensuring that the patients get the best quality care without compromising their safety within and outside the facilities. It is the duty of the nurses on call, for instance, to ensure that the in-patients get their prescribed medication in accordance to the treatment process or the patient’s charts. The nurses also have a responsibility to make sure that the patients do not miss their dosage or take the right dosage of medication for the outpatients CITATION All12 \l 1033 (Allbee, 2012). Failure to meet these and other parameters of medication may result in fatal consequences on the patient as it may lead to negative drug events, lengthening of the patients’ hospital stay, as well as morbidity and even mortality. It is important to reiterate on the fact that administration of medication errors form one of the most common mistakes compromising patient safety in the health care sector. However, one cannot state the magnitude of the problem without a clear or more precise definition of the problem. Administration of medication errors refers to the care provider’s wrongful prescription, dispensing, and administration of drugs to a patient and thus exposing them to preventable harm CITATION Aro091 \l 1033 (Aronson, Medication errors: definitions and classification, 2009). The wide range or scope of the patient safety problem demands a comprehensive approach in determining the extent of harm or rather the magnitude of the problem. Nevertheless, the patient safety problem has equally diverse repercussions on both the patients and the health care sector. Provided herein is a comprehensive analysis of the risk factors for AMEs, its prevalence in the health care sector, the model practices for reduced occurrences of the problem, and the proposed strategic or interventional measures to protect patients from such mistakes. The paper seeks to achieve the outlined objective by making a critical analysis of selected literature on the administration of medication errors with the key phrase medication administration error being the selection criteria for the sources used. Magnitude of the Problem According to Feleke, et al., Medication administration error: magnitude and associated factors among nurses in Ethiopia, the omission of doses and administration of drugs at the wrong time form a significant part of the administration of medication errorsCITATION Fel15 \l 1033 (Feleke, 2015). The study conducted by Feleke and colleagues goes ahead to point at the shocking statistics provided by the National Patient Safety of United Kingdom (UK) that 50% of all drug administration in hospitals are erraticCITATION Fel15 \l 1033 (Feleke, 2015). In essence, the agency purports that half of all the drug administration occurring in the UK’s hospitals constitutes the administration of medication errors. According to the article, the administration of medication errors in the United States accounts for approximately $380 million in extra spending by the nation’s healthcare systemCITATION Fel15 \l 1033 (Feleke, 2015). The costs are reflective of the occurrence of errors during the administration of medication ranging from between 5 to 20% of all the drug administrations performed by the systemCITATION Fel15 \l 1033 (Feleke, 2015). The safety problem is also responsible for exposing over 1.5 million patients to potential harm from medication errors and over 400,000 patients to preventable negative drug events in the United States each yearCITATION Fel15 \l 1033 (Feleke, 2015). A Literature review on medication safety in Australia also creates an informed understanding of the safety problem’s magnitude in the country’s healthcare system. The review conducted by Roughead, Semple, and Rosenfeld suggests that the administration of medication errors account for an estimated range of between 2 to 3% of all hospital administrations in Australia CITATION Rou13 \l 1033 (Roughead L. S., 2013). The adverse drug reaction and events in Australia are responsible for a majority of the country’s hospital administrations with higher percentages of between 20 to 30% recorded among patients within the aging population of above 65years CITATION Bed10 \l 1033 (Bedford, 2010). The medication-related complication in Australia results in an annual admission of approximately 230,000 patients CITATION Rou13 \l 1033 (Roughead L. S., 2013). Another article by the same set of authors breaks down the magnitude of the administration of medication errors in Australia into medication errors on admission to hospital and prescribing errors in the hospital. According to the article, 60 to 80% of inpatients showed anomalies in the history of their medications in the Australian hospitals studied CITATION Rou16 \l 1033 (Roughead E. E., 2016). Prescription errors, on the other hand, were reported to be at an alarming rate of between 1 to 1.5 errors for each patient in the Australian healthcare system CITATION Rou16 \l 1033 (Roughead E. E., 2016). Defining best Practice The adverse effects of administration of medication errors call for the implementation and incorporation of best practices to enhance the quality of patient care in healthcare systems around the world. However, the wide range of classifications of the AMEs poses a challenge to most healthcare facilities as they have to determine the most prevalent error to come up with the best course of action CITATION Chu16 \l 1033 (Chu, 2016). Hence, defining the best practice for dealing with the patient safety problem takes a multidimensional approach and that which is dependent on the source or classification of the medication error most committed by health care providers within a given facility (Aronson, 2009). One of the best practices includes embracing computerized prescribing systems, bar-coding medication systems, and cross-checking of medication with colleagues at work CITATION Cim11 \l 1033 (Cima, 2011). The outlined practices function to prevent the knowledge-based errors committed by practitioners who lack the knowledge of dosing information, which often leads to prescription errors. The administration of medication errors committed through the ignorance of set rule and standards of administering medications also calls for putting more emphasis on complying with the appropriate practice CITATION Bif15 \l 1033 (Bifftu, 2015). The best practice for such errors would be to engage the care providers in educational programs to assist them in reducing or avoiding committing mistakes. The educational programs may pose financial challenges to the institutions. Action-based errors also known as slips account for various medication errors committed during prescription, dispensing and administration of the drug CITATION Kee13 \l 1033 (Keers, 2013). The care provider may pick up a drug container that looks similar to the one recommended for a patient’s diagnosis and thus committing an administration of medication error. The misreading of labels is also a frequent occurrence among practitioners and a common cause for medication errors CITATION Cou09 \l 1033 (Courtenay, 2009). Healthcare facilities should come up with a coding system for drugs to enhance patient safety as it will reduce the misreading of labels. Strategies for Imp...