NHS FPX 4000 Assessment 2 Applying Research Skills Annotated bibliography and summary Medication errors

 
Near misses and adverse effects may or may not harm the patients, but they create panic and distrust in patients leading to lower quality of care. Medication errors are one of the major reasons for adverse effects (Desai et al., 2016). There are different types of medication errors, which include dosage errors, wrong or improper package information, drug-drug interactions, mismatch in patient’s electronic health records, and poor medication administration (Schmidt et al., 2017). Some of the errors can have an adverse effect on patients and even lead to morbidity and mortality. In their study, Kang et al. (2017) reported that at least five near misses every month, 14.8% of dispensing errors, 4.3% administration errors, and 43.9% prescription errors were from 32 pharmacies. However, only 37.1% prescription errors, 57.4% administration errors, and 43.7% dispensing errors were reported. Salar et al. (2020) highlighted that prevalence of errors varies from 32.1% to 94%. Also, 23%, 38%, and 39% of medication errors were associated with pharmacies, nurses, and general practitioners respectively (Salar et al., 2020).

Medication errors increase the burden on dispensing, administration, and packaging units. Cumulatively, it leads to work burden on the nurses and reduces patient satisfaction level and trust in health care (Musharyanti et al., 2019). Further, blame culture due to medication errors lead to delay in care and creates conflicts. As a result, different systems and protocols such as the use of electronic error reporting, root cause analysis, use of tabards, mobile app-based anonymous reporting, training nurses to report errors, and other systems to reduce and prevent errors (Bosma et al., 2020). As a nurse, I prefer to not commit any kinds of medication errors and prevent errors by implementing different protocols and technologies to increase the quality of care. However, it is important to select a technique or combination of techniques that are efficient (Musharyanti et al., 2019).

Personal experience with medication error

I worked in an ICU unit of an acute health care setting with an emergency unit nearby. I was assigned a 65-year-old man with cardiac arrhythmia and a 53-year-old woman who was under colonoscopy prep. While administrating medication, I was approached by the family of a patient who was in ER because of cardiac arrest. As ER had very few nurses,