This paper will be proposing an improvement plan tool kit to enhance the quality and safety of the care being provided to the patients. This is crucial to the nurses as they play a vital role in working closely with the patients. Adhering to this plan would mitigate the medication errors that pose harm to the patients and distress to the nurses. Consisting of 12 credible resources this plan will support the analysis of the elements of a successful improvement initiative and factors that lead to safety risks. It would then go on to determine organizational interventions and nurses’ role in enhancing patient safety. This plan is focusing on the incident of a young cancer patient Sam who was given the wrong rate of infusion pumps; thus, this plan will be talking about the initiative to mitigate the medication errors specific to wrong drugs or doses being given to the patient.
Elements of Successful Quality Improvement Initiative
Taylor, M., & Jones, R. (2019). Risk of medication errors with infusion pumps. Patient Safety, 61–69.
Get Help With Your Assignment
If you need assistance with writing your coursework, Our Professional Help is here for you!
This article emphasizes the significance of medication errors that result from infusion pumps. There has been a reporting of 1,004 medication error cases with infusion pumps in the state of Pennsylvania in 2018. These cases occurred in 132 different hospitals. Such errors in hospitals cause high-alert as they demonstrate the poor quality of care being provided to the patients, making them lose trust. This article describes that most of the errors with infusion pumps result from malfunctioning devices, poor maintenance of devices, incorrect order or transcription of medication, insufficient information among the nurses, and patient behavior. This article is excellent for all roles of nurses to go through to recognize the nature of this device. For example, in a case where a nurse was unaware that the device they have been using could be malfunctioning, several cases of errors would occur without the nurse even realizing, the awareness of such cases through these papers would allow the nurses to recognize the problems and allow them to maintain such devices more carefully.
Reiner, G., Pierce, S. L., & Flynn, J. (2020). Wrong drug and wrong dose dispensing errors are identified in pharmacist professional liability claims. Journal of the American Pharmacists Association, 60(5), e50–e56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.japh.2020.02.027
This study gathered the data for the claims of the wrong dose of dispensing errors and wrong drug dispensing errors. The study showed that with automation and technology the claims of wrong drug dispensing error decreased from 43.8% in 2013 to 36.8% in 2018, whereas, the wrong dose claims in 2013 were 31.5% and it decreased to 15.3%. The study concluded that even with smarter systems the wrong dose and drug dispensing errors continue to occur due to system or human factors. This supports the implementation of an improvement initiative. This resource is helpful for the nurses in a managerial position to realize that human factors contribute the most to dispensing errors and with the right training for the staff, these factors could be improved and minimized. In a case where implementation of technology was considered to avoid errors without recognizing the human factors, then technology would not prove to be as helpful as even the smarter technological systems require great human skills.
Hoffman, L., & Bacon, O. (2020). Making healthcare safer iii: A critical analysis of existing and emerging patient safety practices [Internet]. [E-book]. Agency for Health Care Research and Quality. NURS FPX 4020 Assessment 4
This book talks about how 72.9% of the hospitals in the US are using smarter infusion pumps and many organizations have identified them to be safer as they have safety features like an alarm system. The Institute of Medicine has suggested the adoption of smarter infusion pumps as an effective intervention to reduce medication errors. But along with this, this book emphasizes the education of nurses, protocols, and workflows to be an important part of the system to make sure that the implementation of such technologies is successful. Standardization and streamlining of the workflow are important facilitators. All of these reviews were supported by credible studies. This is again helpful for the administration and managerial nurses to recognize the importance of providing protocols, guidelines, and education so the nurses have steps to fol
Order this paper