Intent: Medication errors can impact patient outcomes, therefore safe and appropriate administration...

Question

Intent: Medication errors can impact patient outcomes, therefore safe and appropriate administration of medicines is an important part of patient safety. The intent of the assessment is to:  prepare students for clinical practice by developing their understanding of the types of medication errors and the reasons these occur,  develop strategies for students’ own clinical practice to prevent medication errors Task: In preparation for clinical practice, you are required to write a report to demonstrate your understanding of medication errors. You will need to identify three major reasons why medication errors occur and explain why each of these reasons can lead to medication errors. Support your explanation with evidence from the literature. Conclude the assignment with how this information will inform your practice on your next clinical placement. The layout of your report is to include 1. Introduction: background information on medication errors; significance of the problem. This section must be supported by current quality evidenced based literature. 2. Main body: use subheadings, one for each of the three factors and discuss why these factors lead to medication errors and the impact on patient safety. This section must be supported by current quality evidenced based literature. 3. Conclusion: describe how the evidence will inform your practice on clinical placement and state three strategies that you as a registered nurse can use to prevent medication errors. This section must be supported by current quality evidenced based literature. Your report will need to be supported by at least 6 quality evidence-based references including two (2) from textbooks, three (3) from nursing journals and one (1) from an Australian government/health website are used in this assessment item. Please see the marking rubric for a detailed description of each section of the report. There is also a template provided for your report.

Rimsha · Accepted Answer

MEDICATION ERRORS
Table of Contents
Introduction	3
Factors Resulting in Medication Error	3
Poor Communication between Healthcare Professionals	3
Lack of Trained Nursing Staff	4
High Workload of Nurses	4
Conclusion	5
References	6
Introduction
In today’s world, every house has been intervened with medical treatment. From the minor treatment like influenza treatment or major treatments like chemotherapy, errors in the treatment have become very common. It is expected from the healthcare organisations or professionals to provide safe treatment to the patients. As mentioned by Jember et al. (2018), medication errors in adverse cases have resulted in the death of the individual. Medication errors are responsible for the worsening of the condition of the patients. 
It even resulted in the failure to rescue. Medication errors are responsible for making treatment complicated. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2018), rate of medication error is 42%. Most of the medication errors occur due to use of wrong prescription and inaccurate dosage of medicine. According to World Health Organization (2016), there are many factors, which are responsible for the medication errors such as wrong perception of risks, physical and emotional health issues, poor communication, high workload, and lack of proper training.
Factors Resulting in Medication Error
Poor Communication between Healthcare Professionals
It has been seen that high rate of medication errors occur when there is poor communication between nurse and the doctors or between other healthcare professionals. As mentioned by Sassoli, and Day (2017), communication is very important part of the healthcare organisation. When healthcare professionals have poor channel of communication, then it resulted in lowering of the quality of the treatment given to the patients mainly due to occurrence of the medication errors. It has been seen that when nurses have poor communication especially when they are taking shifts over, high medication errors occur in that situation. 
This is because when one nurse fails to discuss the progress of the patient or fails to notify the change in the prescription of the patient, the nurse, who takes over the shift most likely to give the old medication intervention. As a result, this complicates the treatment of the patients. As suggested by Shitu et al. (2018), lack of communication between healthcare professionals, who collaborated for the treatment of the patients, is often the key reason for the occurrence of miscommunication. This miscommunication results into medication errors.

Intent: Medication errors can impact patient outcomes, therefore safe and appropriate administration of medicines is an important part of patient safety. The intent of the assessment is to:  prepare...

Answer To: Intent: Medication errors can impact patient outcomes, therefore safe and appropriate administration...

Answer To This Question Is Available To Download

Related Questions & Answers

Submit New Assignment