Enhancing Quality and Safety in Medication Administration

Enhancing Quality and Safety in Medication Administration

With an unacceptably high number of medication errors in a variety of healthcare settings, nurses must continuously be on guard in addition to being innovative to find ways to keep up with the ever-changing healthcare environment. Patient safety is of the utmost importance to this writer and all levels of management at the organization this writer is employed at. One of the greatest concerns is medication errors that have the possibility of causing patient harm and even mortality. Reducing or eliminating errors is imperative to ensure patient safety. As nurses, we have a duty to First Do No Harm, and members of the nursing profession are in a unique position to detect and prevent medication errors but are unfortunately also at a high risk of committing med errors. Increased workload and staffing shortages can interfere with safe medication administration Definition of medication errors: The National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention (NCCMERP) defines medication errors as "any preventable event that may lead to an inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is the control of the healthcare professional, patient, or consumer" (NCCMERP, 2022) Factors leading to Infusion associated medication errors According to an article in theArt and Science of Infusion Nursing,"Infusion-associated medication errors have the potential to cause the greatest patient harm...Most errors involve improper dosage, mistaken drug choice, knowledge-based or skill-based errors, or memory lapses. (Robinson Wolf & Jighes, 2019). "Most infusion-associated medication errors occur during the medication reconstitution and administration" (Robinson Wolf & Jighes, 2019)