NURS FPX 4020 Assessment 1
Name: Capella University
Professor:
May 2023
Globally, medication mistake errors are the main consideration in healthcare settings. At any stage of treatment, prescription and administration, these medication errors can occur which have adverse consequences on the patient’s health results. Across the US, medication mistakes are a major problem that kills one person and injures 1.5 million individuals yearly (Aseeri et al., 2020). Research studies have validated that medication mistakes rank third among the leading causes of death after cancer and cardiovascular diseases (Rasool et al., 2020).
Healthcare workers have a key responsibility for these medication mistakes. This issue is critical depending on various factors and making every stakeholder responsible. The multiple organizational factors might be poor communication, inadequate training, mistaken documentation, data gaps, and technological barriers. Whereas, patient parameters causing medication mistakes are insufficient health awareness, compliance and wrong self-prescriptions. There is a need for multi-aspect strategies for handling medication mistakes. This strategy will require strong communication and collaboration among patients, doctors, healthcare providers, nurses, administrators, and other related stakeholders. Moreover, for the enhancement of patient safety, sufficient training, assessment, and evaluation are important.
A 50-year-old man reported chest tightness, pain, and breath shortness due to which he was hospitalized. His medical history showed that he has hypertension and increased cholesterol. The preliminary identification revealed that he had a blocked heart artery which needed angioplasty. The angioplasty surgery was planned for the very next day. He was prescribed medicines for blood thinning and analgesics to control the present condition. That man was allergic to one of the medicines but this fact was missed out by the nurse who was checking his medical and medication history.
Consequently, the patient suffered from a severe allergic reaction which caused breathing discomfort and throat swelling. The healthcare staff right away handled the situation by giving the patient an antidote for the allergic response. The patient got stabilized and normal but there was a higher probability of complications due to medication mistakes. This careless and irresponsible event was reported to the organization’s administration. It immediately formed an investigation committee to find the root cause of medication mistakes and to avoid such events from occurring in the future.
Medication mistakes put the patient at high safety risk and threaten his life. These errors can occur at any phase of the medication procedure such as diagnosis, prescription, transcription, purchasing, and administration (Tariq & Scherbak, 2023). Various factors that are linked with medication errors are insufficient health education, poor training, disproportionate staffing, extreme work burden, time constraints, non-compliance with the medical standards, poor communication among healthcare workers, departments, and patients, and inappropriate evaluation (Suzuki et al., 2022). These aspects can increase the probability of medication mistakes and can accelerate bad drug incidents, high healthcare expenditures, and decreased patient contentedness.
NURS FPX 4020 Assessment 1
In this incident, the patient could have suffered severe implications due to a medication mistake which led to an adverse allergic reaction. If it is not dealt with immediately, this could increase the disease complications for the patient. The possible factors for this medication mistake are non-compliance with double-checking methodology, inadequate training, and poor communication. The patient’s medical and medication history was not read properly by the respective nurse which is an important stage in patient safety interventions. Moreover, the healthcare organization might not have an appropriate medication error prevention system i.e., barcodes and digital data entry.
The main objective of healthcare workers is to give prime priority to patient safety. Medication mistakes can be decreased significantly by using evidence-based solutions and best medical practices. Electronic Medication Administration results (eMARs) are one of the potential solutions. It can reduce the probability of medication mistakes by ensuring instant access to updated patient’s medical history and decr
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