Project Issue: Effects of Medication Errors in Health Care, Essay Example

Brief Summary of Underlying Practice

Health care institutions are becoming increasingly concerned with ensuring that they are able to provide their patients with quality care and safety. Medication errors are easily avoidable, but contribute to great financial loses in addition to significantly compromising patient health. It is therefore the responsibility of nurses and other health care professionals to ensure that these mistakes are reduced. Research has indicated that leading factors that contribute to the resolution of medication errors are related to the efficacy of training that nurses have received, staffing levels, and the utilization of electronic health record systems.

Ultimately, medication errors occur due to the fallacies of both humans and technology. These most common category of errors include incorrect dosage and incorrect infusion rate (Cheragi et al., 2013). Associated causes were replacing the correct drug name with abbreviations in addition to those of similar sounding medications. Therefore, lack of proper pharmacological knowledge is the leading cause of medication errors. It is important to consider that the need to form rushed decisions also contribute to these mistakes. Therefore, it is essential for medical facilities to be appropriately staffed to ensure that nurses spend the proper amount of time with their patients (Hertel, 2012). Furthermore, there is much debate in the field as to whether electronic health records are advantageous. While it is possible this is not true in every aspect of health care, they have been shown to work towards the reduction of human error (Bowman, 2013).

Causes and Outcomes of Medication Errors

Many health care organizations have conducted studies to determine the causes and outcomes medication errors in their patient populations. An average of 65% of nurses have reported that they had made a medication error during their practice and an average of 31% claim that they had been close to making a mistake (Cheragi et al., 2013). As a consequence, the leading cause of medication error is human error. To alter these outcomes, it is important to provide nurses with more effective training programs in addition to mentors they would be able to consult for advice. Studies have shown that doing so will help develop the knowledge of nurses regarding medication errors, and at minimum, ensure that these health care professionals are accountable for their actions (Townsend, 2010).

Many health care professionals argue that paper recording and lack of communication are a cause of medication errors as well. To track these errors and therefore provide a means with which they can be resolved, electronic health record systems can be used. Since these records can be accessed by any member of staff, errors are more easily detected in retrospect. As a consequence, continuous errors can indicate that training needs to take place, and the EHR system can operate as a means of feedback for outcomes (Bowman, 2013).

Impact of Medication Errors in Health Care

Medication errors can have a detrimental impact on the quality of life of patients, causing death or disability. Another important concern is the resulting financial cost for both the health care institution and the patient. According to the authors of a recent report, “preventable medical errors may cost the U.S. economy up to $1 trillion” (Andel et al., 2012). For the approximately 98,000 deaths that occur as a consequence of medical errors, the cost of each death is up to $100,000 per year for the medical institution. This impairs the ability of the institution to care for the patients it currently has, and is a potential source of staffing problems and the lack of available resources for treatment, which can contribute to a greater number of medication errors in the long run.

New Practices for Addressing Medication Errors

Nurses have an integral role in promoting patient safety. The American Nurses Association currently has several training programs in place, such as The National Database for Nursing Quality Indicators and Staffing Saves Lives, to suit this purpose (AHRQ, 2010). The goals of these programs are to ensure that the training that nurses receive are in accordance to specified standards in addition to providing health care organizations with knowledge of how to properly staff the institution in order to support patient safety. While these programs have already documented success, it is important for nurses to continue researching the best ways in order to ensure that the distribution and application of medications remains accurate.

Many education programs have been developed in a manner that support the use of electronic health record systems. As a consequence, this training works to ensure that human error can be removed from prescribing and issuing medications by providing nurses with a means to check the accuracy of orders. Since electronic health record systems allow nurses to consult notes left by physicians and other caretakers, they will have the ability to determine whether the proposed treatment plan appears to be rational, and call it into question if necessary. In addition, the system can be utilized to record applied doses, which will allow the health care team to be aware of any errors that can be potentially rectified in the following applications.

Summary of the Evidence-Based Practice Model

In order to rectify the problem of frequent medication errors, it is essential to refer to the evidence-based practice model to ensure that health care professionals are provided with the proper education and training that will resolve this problem (Rosswurm et al., 1999). The model was designed on the basis of the understanding that there is a need for change in practice. The first step of this process necessitates, therefore, that the internal data from an institution is compared to external data in order to form a comparison of practice that will indicate the needs of the institution. In this situation, this step would require the comparison of the medication error data of an institution to similar data on a state or national level to determine how significantly the figure should be reduced. Next, the problem intervention and outcomes should be linked. This would require an assessment of instances in attempts to reduce medication errors have been made in addition to noting the results of such studies.

The next step requires an assessment of which interventions and outcomes are most ideal based on existing evidence. In this instance, there is evidence in the literature for implementation of electronic health record systems, additional staffing, and revised training programs as reasonable ways to reduce the percentage of medication error. The fourth step is to define a proposed change that is testable to determine if there is a better solution to the proposed problem. In this situation, it would be ideal to consider a combination of training and electronic health record use pertaining specifically to tracking and applying medication to patients over time. After implementing this intervention, the change should be tracked over time and integrated and maintained if the results indicate that it is successful.

References

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Medical Errors and Patient Safety. Retrieved from http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/errorsix.htm

Andel C, Davidow SL, Hollander M, Moreno DA. (2012). The Economics of Health Care Quality and Medical Errors. Journal of Health Care Finance, 39(1).

Bowman S. (2013). Impact of Electronic Health Record Systems on Information Integrity: Quality and Safety Implications. Perspect Health Inf Manag, 10: 1c.

Cheragi MA, Manoocheri H, Mohammadnejad E, Ehsani SR. (2013). Types and causes of medication errors from nurse’s viewpoint. Iran J Nurs Midwifery Res, 18(3): 228–231.

Hertel, R. (2012). Regulating patient staffing: A complex issue.Med-Surg Matters, 21(1), 3–7.

Rosswurm MA, Larrabee JH. (1999). A Model for Change to Evidence-Based Practice. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 31(4): 317-322.

Townsend T. (2010). Medication errors: Don’t let them happen to you. American Nurse Today, 5(3).