Running head: MEDICATION ERRORS Medication Errors Reynaldo Rueda Acosta Capella University October 12, 2020 1 MEDICATION ERRORS 2 Medication Errors In the recent times there has been increased concerns about medical errors. The focus has been caused by an increasing cases of incidents where either patients die or get adverse effects due to medication errors. Although, there is a possibility of medical errors, the chances should be slim for healthcare workers because of the fact that they are dealing with human life. The need to take appropriate action and reduce medication errors is based on studies which show that the common sources of medical errors tiredness, lack of proper training, medical negligence and medication calculations. The positive correlation between tiredness and medication errors is attributed to instances where health workers works for long hours and as a result are likely to commit errors. An instance is where a hospital human resource department creates a schedule for nurses to work on two shifts of 12 hour each. It is practically impossible for the nurses to work for continuous 12 hours with the same level of effectiveness. However, if healthcare workers shift are reduce to say 6 hours a day they are likely to be effective a factor which will lead to a reduction in medication errors. Identifying Academic Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles I used Summon, Capella University Library to access healthcare database like ProQuest and PubMed. The Keywords used for the search were medical errors, negligence, medical calculation, tiredness, stress, communication. To ensures my results were limited to reviewed journal articles I limited filtered by including terms like journal articles in nursing and medicine Assessing Credibility and Relevance of Information Sources The relevance of the sources was maintaining by limiting my articles to within four years from the time of conducting my research. I checked the credentials to ensure that they are experts or researchers on matters of health a factor which guaranteed the credibility of the sources. The MEDICATION ERRORS 3 credibility of the sources was also put in check by ensuring that the content of the study is in line with my research topic. Annotated Bibliography Ahmed Z, Saada M, Jones A. M, & Al-Hamid A. M (2019) Medical errors: Healthcare professionals’ perspective at a tertiary hospital in Kuwait. PLoS ONE 14(5): e0217023. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217023 This article is privy to the fact sometimes medical errors can be detrimental to the safety of patients. The fact that medical errors are a result of preventable events means it is possible to take some steps to reduce the errors. The findings of this research are informed from a quantitative study of 203 health professionals. The study found that the frequency of medical errors is as high as 60.3% in Kuwait. The negative effects of medication errors led to 30.9% of the patients staying longer in hospitals, 32.3% developing life threatening conditions and about 20.9% incidents of fatalities. According to Ahmed, Saada , Jones, & Al-Hamid (2019) the common causes of medical errors are incomplete instructions, incorrect dosage, high workload, medical negligence and inadequate training. Gorgich, E. A., Barfroshan, S., Ghoreishi, G., & Yaghoobi, M. (2016). Investigating the Causes of Medication Errors and Strategies to Prevention of Them from Nurses and Nursing Student Viewpoint. Global Journal of Health Science, 8(8), 54448. https://doi.org/10.5539/gjhs.v8n8p220 This article provides information on the major causes of medication errors and then provided some recommendations on what the healthcare sector should do to minimize the errors. According to findings which were based on a descriptive study of about 327 nursing staff and 62 interns from a hospital in Iran, 97.8 % of medication errors are attributed to nurses being tired MEDICATION ERRORS 4 due to increased workload. While 77.4% were caused by wrong drug calculation. Based on the research finding the authors recommended that there is need for the healthcare sector to address the issues of workload by engaging more medical workers. For instance, by employing more nurses there will be less pressure on the workers a factor which will make them to be alert when attending to patients. Besides, there is need to create a special unit of medication calculation a factor that is likely to reduce the cases of medication errors. Salhotra, R., & Tyagi, A. (2019). Medication errors: They continue. Journal of Anaesthesiology, Clinical Pharmacology, 35(1), 1–2. https://doi.org/10.4103/joacp.JOACP_88_19 According to Salhotra & Tyagi (2019), medication errors are caused by inappropriate administration of drugs or procedure by healthcare workers. Besides, the authors note that despite the advancements in technology medication errors continue to persist. The study was based on a number of literature review and found that one of the leading causes of medication errors is communication. This was linked to lack of clarity during verbal communication or as a result of an illegible handwriting. The effect is wrong administration of drugs a factor which may make the patient to experience adverse reactions. This article also highlighted the use of abbreviations as another cause of medication errors. This is common in the administration of LASA drugs. The suggestions for eliminating the errors entails putting in place a computerized physician order entry system and discouraging the use of abbreviation or giving verbal instructions for LASA drugs. Zyoud, A & Abdullah, N. A. C. (2016). The Effect of Individual Factors on the Medication Error. Global Journal of Health Science. 8. 197. 10.5539/gjhs.v8n12p197. This article provides some insight on medication errors by noting that this issues has been a thorn in the fresh in the healthcare industry a factor that has attracted attention. The focus is MEDICATION ERRORS 5 reflected in the increased number of studies which seek to determine the common causes of medication errors and possible solutions. The findings of the article are informed from feedback of about 255 registered nurses. The study highlighted issues like mathematical calculation and lack of proper training to be the major causes of medical errors. It is for this reason that health facilities need to take further steps like retraining the nurses to ensure that they have proper understating of drug calculation. The measure will result in the reduction of medication errors. Learning from the Research From the literature reviews I have gained some understanding of medication errors. I found that most medication errors are caused by known issues and this is promising because it can be the basis for instituting appropriate action. Zyoud & Abdullah (2016) noted that most of the medication errors are caused by human factors like tiredness and wrong medical calculations. Based on this facts and the selection of appropriate research articles I will be able to conduct further research and write a good paper on medical errors. MEDICATION ERRORS 6 References Ahmed Z, Saada M, Jones A. M, & Al-Hamid A. M (2019) Medical errors: Healthcare professionals’ perspective at a tertiary hospital in Kuwait. PLoS ONE 14(5): e0217023. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217023 Gorgich, E. A., Barfroshan, S., Ghoreishi, G., & Yaghoobi, M. (2016). Investigating the Causes of Medication Errors and Strategies to Prevention of Them from Nurses and Nursing Student Viewpoint. Global Journal of Health Science, 8(8), 54448. https://doi.org/10.5539/gjhs.v8n8p220 Salhotra, R., & Tyagi, A. (2019). Medication errors: They continue. Journal of Anaesthesiology, Clinical Pharmacology, 35(1), 1–2. https://doi.org/10.4103/joacp.JOACP_88_19 Zyoud, A & Abdullah, N. A. C. (2016). The Effect of Individual Factors on the Medication Error. Global Journal of Health Science. 8. 197. 10.5539/gjhs.v8n12p197.
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