Hospital Nursing, Care Quality, and Patient Satisfaction, Essay Example

In this essay, I intend to address several objectives related to preventing medication errors. The first objective is to review the literature to distinguish the common types of medical errors and how they can be prevented. Next, a plan for patient safety quality improvement will developed through gaining an understanding of the various procedures, protocols and policies that impact patients (You et al., 2013). Third, a list of the common medication errors that can make a medical setting unsafe for patients will be created. Fourth, the prevention of medication errors in various settings for different populations will be discussed. Last, the various reporting systems and approaches that deal with medication errors will be evaluated.

To be able to evaluate these outcomes, it is important to work closely with the health care organization, as patient data is needed throughout this process. At the beginning of the study, it will be necessary to gain a quantitative understanding of patient safety related to medication errors at my institution. In addition, it will be necessary to have a qualitative understanding of the policies that are in place that lead to these quantitative results. Therefore, it will be essential to determine the current amount of medication errors that are occurring in the hospital and track how this number has changed throughout the previous year (Hartnell et al., 2012). It will then be necessary to determine which institutional policies were in place during each month to determine the regulations that medication error highs and lows coincided with. For this previous year, the specific types of medication errors that occurred will be broken down into specific categories and attempts that currently exist within the institution to reduce medication errors will be documented. Last, the reporting systems that were used to keep track of these errors will be assessed; data will be used from the current state of the hospital to determine whether all medication error cases were accurately recorded. All of this information will be compared to the state of the hospital during the 12 months following a new intervention to determine whether the initiative is successful.

Based on an evaluation of these outcomes, it will be necessary to alter institutional policy in a manner that allows the hospital to become more accountable for the medication errors that occur. When workers become more diligent in recording and reporting these errors, the hospital will gain more information that will help them reduce the number of mistakes that are made. As a consequence, employees will be required to track medication records of all patients rigorously, including the date that the medication was issued, the type and dose of medication, other types and doses of medication that the patient is currently taking, and the progress of the patient over time as each dose is given (Watts et al., 2013). Furthermore, the employee will be required to double check the information provided in the medication profile before medications are provided to ensure that all health care personnel agree with the initial decision for treatment. As such, a rationalization for the decision should also be provided in the profile.

The new standard of care that will likely arise from this study is that health care professionals will be required to communicate with one another verbally and in written form regarding the provision of medication (Riley, 2014). In this manner, employees will be provided with the opportunity to clarify misunderstandings and discuss alternate treatment plans if these exist. Since many nurses have their own way of treating patients, it is important to make this setting more of a collaboration so that the experiences of many nurses can be utilized to treat the patients, which will allow this to be done much more efficiently and effectively.

References

Hartnell N, MacKinnon N, Sketris I, Fleming M. (2012). Identifying, understanding and overcoming barriers to medication error reporting in hospitals: a focus group study. BMJ Qual Saf, 21:361-368.

Riley JB. (2014). Communication in Nursing. Elsevier.

Watts RG, Parsons K. (2013). Chemotherapy medication errors in a pediatric cancer treatment              center: Prospective characterization of error types and frequency and development of a quality improvement initiative to lower the error rate. Pediatric Blood Cancer, 60(8): 1320-1324.

You L, Aiken LH. (2013). Hospital nursing, care quality, and patient satisfaction: Cross-sectional surveys of nurses and patients in hospitals in China and Europe. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 50(2): 154-161.