Analyzing a current health care problem or issue Medication errors 

Analyzing a current health care problem or issue Medication errors 

The mortality rate due to different medication errors in the United State is between 7,000 and 9,000. Medication errors leading to adverse effects can easily cross hundreds of thousands of patients. Medication errors increase health care costs by $40 billion for every 7 million patients every year (Tariq et al., 2020). As a result, it is critical to address the issue to increase patient satisfaction, quality care, nurse competencies, coordination between health care and pharmacies, and establish a high-performing health care facility. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the medication error problems and solutions to mitigate them to propose and provide an action plan to implement the solution by considering its effectiveness and ethical implications. The paper first identifies different factors and elements that are associated with the issue, effects of these factors and issue, different types of medication errors, different solutions adopted by health care institutions, critical analysis of the solutions, proposed solution, its ethical consideration, and evidence-based change implementation model to implement and evaluate the solution.  

Effects on nurses and other health care professionals

Poor job satisfaction is the overall adverse effect of the medication issue as increased medication errors represent poor professional behavior. Blame culture is fairly common in health care as different units such as pharmacy, dispense units, nursing staff, physicians, and other health care professionals involved in medication error conflicts. Conflicts lead to anxiety and depression in nurses as the work environment will not be supportive (Muir-Cochrane et al., 2018). For example, the death of a patient due to high dosage will create conflict. Finding root-cause takes time due to different units. As nurses are at the lower end of the chain they will get blamed first resulting in fear and poor mental health and lower job satisfaction (Afolalu et al., 2021).