Medication errors can have either be harmful or harmless, but it decreases the quality of care, increases conflict between health care professionals, pharmacy, medical transcriptionist, and other stakeholders (Thompson et al., 2018). Also, it reduces the trust of patients in health care. The elements of the problem are packaging errors, prescription errors, dispensing errors, drug administration, poor communication, and adverse drug reactions (Hammoudi et al., 2017).
Packaging errors are of two types. The first one is related to poor printing and wrong information. Wrong information includes dosage, similar names, and chemical composition errors. This issue can only be resolved if the nurses observe adverse effects and report the effect to investigate the medication if the package has the right information, but the wrong product or vice versa (Gilmartin-Thomas et al., 2017). Also, dispensing unit can identify it if there are minor errors on the packaging. This error can lead to increased health complications and pose threats to the patients as medicine can be completely different due to packaging errors (Brass et al., 2018). The probability of errors is moderate.
The second type of error is related to a frequent and sudden change in the original packaging, name series, and color of the medicine. A study by Gilmartin-Thomas et al. (2017) that medication errors were observed after a change in packaging. It creates confusion among nurses due to a lack of communication between pharmacists and nurses regarding change of packaging (Brass et al., 2018). The probability of errors is moderate.
Prescription errors ranged from 6% to 77.7% (Korb-Savoldelli et al., 2018). These errors are highly likely and they are related to lapses, mistakes, and errors in calculation due to similarities in pharmaceuticals and drug names, wrong and incomplete patient and drug information on prescription, and computerized physician order entry (CPOE) (Kadmon et al., 2017). Dispensing errors and prescription errors are related to discrepancies between the medicine delivered to patients or wards and the prescription (Abdel-Qader et al., 2020). The errors can vary from 1.25% to 45% (Kumar et al., 2019).
Drug administration errors are mainly because of the wrong time of administration, wrong dosage and omission, wrong administration rate, wrong preparation, and administering medicines from dispensing error without verifying and contacting pharmacy dispense unit (Palese et al., 2019). The error rate varies from 8% to 25% and most of the errors are from nurses (Suclupe et al., 2020). Drug administration errors can result from interferences during administration time and individual errors. These errors are likely to occur because of increased turnover rate and patient count.
Poor communication results in increasing the medication error chances as preventive and corrective actions cannot be implemented. This further creates a gap between prescription, dispense, and drug administration units leading to blame culture and conflicts. adverse drug reactions. Communication failures include no acknowledgment, poor suggestion, improper information, and delayed response (Hohenstein et al., 2016). This error is highly likely as dependence on prescription and dispensing software can lead to lower communication.
Analysis of the problem or issue
Medication errors are defined as any preventable events that may lead to patient harm leading to adverse effects. Adverse effects are defined as negative drug reactions, which can be unintended, undesired, and noxious. An adverse drug event is defined as an injury from improper dosage, administration, and other errors. Injury can be morbidity or even mortality (Tariq et al., 2020).
As medication errors affect patient security, as a nurse, it is my job to limit such errors to increase patient safety. Further, such errors increase hospital costs s health care has to treat the adverse event (Tariq et al., 2020). Thus, it increases hospital stay and readmission rates. Such errors further increase the burden on nurses as the nurse-to-patient ratio decreases (Suclupe et al., 2020). Errors can lead to disciplinary actions and at times, legal actions (Tariq et al., 2020). This decreases the trust of the patient in health care indicating that the health care facility has low quality of care. As a result, the problem is important.
Effect on patients
All the medication errors can affect the patients negatively. Negative effects are not just limited to primary or secondary health concerns, but effects also include psychological concerns as patients who contract other diseases and infections during a hospital stay are at higher risk of becoming stressed, anxious, and depressed (AbuNaba’a & Basheti, 2019). For example, patien
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