Medical Errors and Preventions

Medical Error
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Medical Error
Introduction
A medical error is a preventable adverse outcome occurring during healthcare care.. This paper will focus on medication errors by focusing on the article Preventing medication errors in Hospitals: A Qualitative Study, which sought to identify ways of preventing medication errors in hospitals. Administering drugs is one of the primary nursing activities in hospital wards. However, medication errors can occur during drug administration procedures leading to adverse outcomes for patients.
Medication Errors and Prevention
The authors, Salar, Kiani &Rezaee (2020) of the article Preventing medication errors in Hospitals: A Qualitative Study demonstrate that nurses may commit medication errors, but they will need to suitable professionalism and attitudes towards control systems such as validation practices to reduce the incidence of medication errors by nurturing technical strategies. It is recommended that in-service training need regular nurses to allow professional practice when dealing with drug administration.
There is no precise definition of medication error. However, the National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention defines a medication error as any preventable event that may lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while such medication is in the control of the healthcare professional, patient, or consumer (Tariq, Vashisht, Sinha, et al..2020). The authors note that medication errors can be related to professional practice, health care products, procedures, and systems. The system encompasses prescribing, order communication, product labeling and packaging, compounding, dispensing, administration, monitoring, and use. The prevalent reasons underlying medication errors include failure to communicate drug orders, illegible handwriting and instructions, wrong drug selection, similarly named drugs, the confusion arising from similar packaging between products, or errors revolving around dosing units and weight (Tariq, Vashisht, Sinha, et al..2020). Medication errors may emanate from human errors, but they often result from a flawed system with inadequate backup to identify potential points of errors.
Medication errors constitute one of the imminent threats to patients' safety and health. Patient safety raises substantial concerns in healthcare setups. Thus, ensuring flawless drug administration is an essential practice for patient treatment. Nurses play overarching roles in drug administration. A study showed that the prevalence of medication errors is 32.1% to 94%, and 39% of medication errors were associated with general practitioners, 38% to nurses, and 23% to pharmacies (Salar, Kiani &Rezaee, 2020). Thus, nurses are centric on processes that ensure effective handling and administration of drugs to avoid medication errors.
It is critical to prevent medication errors due to adverse outcomes and burdens that relate to drug mishandling. Medication errors are the sixth highest cause of mortality in the U.S after car crashes, diabetes, renal diseases, breast cancer, and influenza (Dirik, Samur, Seren Intepeler, & Hewison, 2019: Salar, Kiani &Rezaee, 202...