Medication Administration

Medication Safety and Errors Discussion

7/25/2010

2 Comments

 
Follow the link to the article about medication safety and errors.  Then, respond to the following questions.  Respond substantively to the responses of at least two of our classmates.
 http://www.americannursetoday.com/assets/0/434/436/440/6276/6334/6350/6356/8b8dac76-6061-4521-8b43-d0928ef8de07.pdf
  1. Select one of the cases of medication errors mentioned in the article.  How could this error have been prevented?
  2. What are the consequences of medication errors to the nurse and patient?
  3. If you were the manager of the nurse who made a medication error, how would you respond to the error?
  4. In your clinical experiences, what strategies do you see that help nurses avoid making medication errors?  What things have you seen that make errors more likely to occur?
2 Comments
Lydia Madsen
8/8/2010 01:23:36 am

#1: I chose the furosemide/ potassium error. This error falls into the look-alike/sound alike error category. In this case a TaLLman lettering system that denotes similarities would not have worked; these drugs do not have similar names. Separating drugs that look alike is a standard, recommended practice; if the labels were similar this would have been potentially beneficial. Scheduling a nurse for no more than 12 hours or not allowing back-to-back shifts after 16 would have probably been the best solution.
#2: For a nurse consequences "may include
disciplinary action by the
state board of nursing, job dismissal,
mental anguish, and possible
civil or criminal charges." The additional impact can be psychological; guilt, remorse, anxiety, loss of clinical confidence. For the patient, medication errors can result in death, significant impairment from either incorrectedly administered drug or not receiving prescribed drug, or loss of confidence in the medical system or the profession of nursing.
#3. As a manager, the steps to prevent and deal with medication error would be to report error immediately by institutional protocol, counsel nurse, and evaluate all staffing issues that may have contributed to error.
#4. Several factors which should be considered to decrease the risk of med errors and when in existence make it more likely for errors to occur:
Inconsistent equipment (several different models of IV pumps which can cause confusion resulting in error)
Understaffing (not enough nurses related to patient acuity) or overscheduling (back-to-back shifts)
Storing look-alike sound-alike drugs near each other.

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nurse1
8/8/2010 06:27:10 am

Medication errors are a common and sometimes deadly error. Transparency and tathking responsibility is the key to decreasing the severity of the incident.

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