Medication Error Research Paper
Medication is very important part of treatment, recovery and management of variety diseases. It has a long journey and many stages while it reaches the patient and at any of these stages an error can occur. This assignment explores types of medication errors, statistics, factors contributing to medication errors, failures to report and prevention.
National Patients Safety Agency medication error defines as ‘The process of prescribing, dispensing, preparing, administering, monitoring or providing medicine advice, regardless of whether harm has occurred or was possible’ (NPSA, 2007: 6). Error can occur at any stage of medication process which includes prescribing, dispensing, administering and monitoring.
Senior pharmacist of the Medication …show more content…
Factors of human errors include poor knowledge of medication or poor experience, lack of effective communication, misinterpretation of drug package information or unclear prescription. However environmental factors such as distractions, poor light on night shifts, noisy and busy ward can have an impact and increase the risk of personal errors occurrence. Poor management and teamwork, lack of staff, unclear error report process, poor training and research resources can lead to organisational or faulty system errors. Also it create additional pressure and can increase medication errors risk. All of these causes are related to each …show more content…
Studies showed that 39% of medication errors occurred in doctors prescribing stage (Agyemang and While 2010). Design,packaging and labeling sometimes can also mislead and contribute to error. All members of team should work together to ensure safe practice. (S.Edwards and S. Axe) 'Patient safety is dependent on the skills, attitudes and actions of healthcare professionals, and also the systems and processes in place to support their work. Medical error is rarely caused by bad individuals. More often it is the end result of bad systems' (NPSA 2010).
Swiss cheese model was mentioned in 'Nurse prescribing' (2015) and very well illustrates relation between prescribing and administrating in whole drug journey to the patient. 'The holes in the slices of Swiss cheese represent a minor error. The holes may allow a problem to pass through to the next layer, but it can be stopped if the holes in the next layer of cheese are in different places.The more minor errors there are, the greater the likelihood of a major
National Patients Safety Agency medication error defines as ‘The process of prescribing, dispensing, preparing, administering, monitoring or providing medicine advice, regardless of whether harm has occurred or was possible’ (NPSA, 2007: 6). Error can occur at any stage of medication process which includes prescribing, dispensing, administering and monitoring.
Senior pharmacist of the Medication …show more content…
Factors of human errors include poor knowledge of medication or poor experience, lack of effective communication, misinterpretation of drug package information or unclear prescription. However environmental factors such as distractions, poor light on night shifts, noisy and busy ward can have an impact and increase the risk of personal errors occurrence. Poor management and teamwork, lack of staff, unclear error report process, poor training and research resources can lead to organisational or faulty system errors. Also it create additional pressure and can increase medication errors risk. All of these causes are related to each …show more content…
Studies showed that 39% of medication errors occurred in doctors prescribing stage (Agyemang and While 2010). Design,packaging and labeling sometimes can also mislead and contribute to error. All members of team should work together to ensure safe practice. (S.Edwards and S. Axe) 'Patient safety is dependent on the skills, attitudes and actions of healthcare professionals, and also the systems and processes in place to support their work. Medical error is rarely caused by bad individuals. More often it is the end result of bad systems' (NPSA 2010).
Swiss cheese model was mentioned in 'Nurse prescribing' (2015) and very well illustrates relation between prescribing and administrating in whole drug journey to the patient. 'The holes in the slices of Swiss cheese represent a minor error. The holes may allow a problem to pass through to the next layer, but it can be stopped if the holes in the next layer of cheese are in different places.The more minor errors there are, the greater the likelihood of a major