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Dear Student
    NURS2006 SUPPLEMENTARY ASSESSMENT
Clinical Practice Improvement Project Report
    Student Name, FAN and ID:
    
    Project Title:
    Medication errors in acute care setting
    Project Aim:
    This project aims to reduce the medication errors among patients below 15 years of age up to 25% through nursing training and protocol within 4 months in the acute care setting of Australia.
    Background and Evidence that the issue is worth solving:
    In today’s world, medical treatment has intervened in every house. Along with this, whether it is influenza treatment or chemotherapy, even errors in medical treatment can be seen. As suggested by Keers et al. (2013), medical treatment can harm patients. In adverse cases, medication can even become reasons for the death of patients. Apart from medication, error in treatment due to mishandling by nurses or other care providers can cause prolonged harm to the patient. As mentioned by Parand et al. (2016), deviation from medicines prescribed and administered can harm the patient, causing complication in treatment. It can also cause side effects leading to new diseases.
As noted by Roughead, Semple and Rosenfeld (2016), there is overall two errors for every three patients at the time of admission. As patients move between healthcare setting and health providers, the miscommunication increases the chances of serious error. Interdepartmental transfers within hospitals and care facilities lead to multiple medicine intakes, which sometimes cause overdose of some chemical compound present in different medicines. According to the survey conducted by Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2018), medication error rate is 42%. Medication errors are mostly occurred due to prescription and some are due to dosage. As noted by Feleke, Mulatu and Yesmaw (2015), factors influencing medication error are lack of therapeutic training, inadequate knowledge of drugs, lack of experience in care provider, overworked or tired healthcare professionals, poor communication between patient, nurses and healthcare providers, wrong perception of risk and physical and emotional health issues.
Other factors associated with medication errors are naming of medicine, labelling and packaging of medicine, lack of standardised protocols and procedures, insufficient resources, distractions, time pressure, workloads, difficult processes for generating correct repeat prescriptions, lack of accuracy of patient records, inadequate design that allows for human error. There is increased need of addressing the issue of errors. As mentioned by Parry, Barriball and While (2015), the major concern of the field is lack of reporting of errors occur, which makes it impossible for identifying the absolute rate of errors occurred. Safe medical practice is foremost aim of the healthcare industry. Their must not be any scope of error in medical practices. These errors can cause hazardous impact on the life of patients. It can damage them in long-term, even cause disabilities in certain cases. Errors can mostly be seen in case of public healthcare facilities due to high workload and time pressure.
    Relevance of Clinical Governance to your project
    Clinical governance can be defined as the form of relationship and responsibilities formed by healthcare organisation between executives, patients, governing body, consumers and clinicians to provide quality services (Fardazar et al., 2015). It makes sure that the community and healthcare organisation deliver safe services with minimal errors in medical practices. It is one of the important factors of corporate governance in healthcare industry. There are seven pillars of clinical governance-consumer value, communication, strategic effectiveness, professional development and management, clinical performance and evaluation, and clinical risk. Clinical governance is all about doing right things.
In this project, four pillars of clinical governance will be used. These four pillars are consumer value, clinical risk, clinical performance and evaluation, professional development and management (NMAHSMH, 2000). In this project, clinical governance encourages staff of acute care setting to plan the intervention in order to reduce medication errors. Once the strategy is formed, it makes sure to implement the strategy to achieve reduce the medication error up to 25% among patients below the age of 15. To start with, nursing staff will assess the level of medication error occur in the care setting and the scope of medication errors.
Clinical governance provides quality medical practice. Consumer value is helpful in minimising the medication error. It will improve the patient’s outcome. It improves the patients’ confidence. As suggested by Donaldson (2018), the knowledge of patient or its family members about their medication helps in prevention of overdose or side effect of the disease. The clinical risk in this project helps in identifying the cause of errors generated in acute care settings. It is helpful in reducing the number of adverse events. It also improves the risk management processes. Clinical performance and evaluation will improve the patients’ outcomes. It will reduce the healthcare cost through reduce adverse events. It will also be developed agreed pathways for the clinical practices.
Professional development and management ensure that nurses are trained enough to do minimal errors. It improved the credentialing of the patients. It improved professional management. It teaches them protocols and methods helpful in reducing medication errors. As noted by Makary and Daniel (2016), medication error is third biggest reason for the death of people in the world. Failure of planning of action or failed technique to achieve the aim is reason for the occurrence of medication errors. Medication errors can be controlled through implementation of clinical governance. Patients’ awareness about the treatment is crucial in this process. Patients who are aware of their treatment tend to get better quality services in comparison to the patients who are not that much aware and sensitive towards the disease.
The clinical governance focusses on prevention of lethal errors or minimising the risk occurring in treatment. As informed by Mohaghegh et al. (2016), it also provides higher quality services and aims for customer satisfaction. Medication error in the industry prevails due to lack of registered cases. The proper strategy is lacking in this area as registered of cases become late and damaged has already been done. The need of clinical governance is particular to the cases such as fall injury, medication errors, and lethal treatment causing severe risk. Consumer satisfaction is main factor associated with success of health care facilities.
    Key Stakeholders:
    This project plan requires collaborative efforts of following key stakeholders to achieve the target:
· Patients’ Family Members:
In this intervention, family members must be alert about the medicines provided to their children. They must be aware of allergies of their children. They will maintain good communication with the nurses. They will understand the need of patient report the nurses.
· Registered and Student Nurses:
Nurses will assist the patient with first aid. They assess the patient and examine their condition regularly. They will analyse the condition of patients after administration of the medicine. They will educate patient’s family members about the dosage of medicines and time medicine will be administered.
· Paediatricians:
They will be decision maker of the plan. They will review the condition the patients. They will recommend the medicines to the patient, which may vary at an individual level. They will recommend which form of medicine will be given to the patient and what type of medicine will be prescribed when patients show side effect to certain therapy.
· Care Manager:
They will provide the training session for the nurses. They will recommend the seminars and workshop for the nurses helpful in developing skills for the acute care setting. They will explain every protocol to the nurses.
· Management of the Healthcare Facility:
Management will organise the training session for the nurses. They print the protocol for the nurses. They will print the charts, in which relevant information about the patients...