Quality Care: Medication Error, Article Review Example

Medication administration is a very tactile procedure in a healthcare setup, and in most cases, the nurses have the responsibility to handle medical administration. However, there is a poor understanding of the medical administration process as a whole. Drawing from various observations, there are several prevailing misconceptions about the medication process. The perception that medication administration is simply giving patients drugs as ordered by physicians prevails all over (Bonnie, Margarete & Barbara 2011). The ethnographic study sought to give a description of the complexity involved in the medication administration through observation.

Qualitative research findings

The findings indicated that the medication administration process comprises of a complex mixture of varied and competing demands.  Therefore, there is a vulnerability to errors in the medication administration process. In actual essence, the probability of catching errors before reaching the patient is quite low.

The underlying reason for the errors is the composite roles administered by the nurses. The demands from institutional policies, patients, technical devices, the physical environment, and the medications themselves are so demanding (Bonnie, Margarete & Barbara 2011).

There is inseparability from other nurses’ work, thus medication administration process bound to interruption. If it is possible to reduce the interruptions, then that would present a viable tactic and solution to reduce medication errors.

Nurses have a 24-hour working system, with shifts for day and night shifts. In their daily organization of activities, it happens that they barely have enough time to allocate to the medication administration process that is time consuming and non-ending.

The nurses’ medication day unfolded many realities that were unconsidered within the temporal boundaries. Nurses face a complex mixture of demands that relate to medication administration. While time management would be an issue in there is need for consideration to at least the workload of the nurses(Bonnie, Margarete & Barbara 2011).. There is need to either add more nurse staff of offload some of their responsibilities to at least reduce medical administration errors.

Reference

Bonnie M. J., Margarete S. & Barbara M. (2011).The Nurse’s Medication Day. Qualitative Health Research. 21(10) 1441–1451.