Medication Administration Errors

Medication Administration Errors
Name
Institution
Due Date
Medication Administration Errors
Introduction
In this study, patient safety problem is the Medication Administration Error (MAE), which ideally should be error-free. Medication administration involves preparation, giving, and documentation of medicines. The administration process is undertaken by nurses who ensure that the right dose of the right drug is actually given to the intended patient at the right schedule time using the right channel (Aronson, 2009). Those charged with the primary responsibility of administering medication are nurses (Hughes & Blegen, 2008). For instance, research by Shane (2015) shows that nurses spend approximately 40% of their work time on medication administration processes. Several health care organisations have adopted different models such as Total Quality Management (TQM), Six Sigma, Plan, and Do, Study, Act (PDSA) including other methods to attain quality improvement (Vickerie, 2017). The rationale behind the choice of the multiple model (PDSA and Kotter’s) approach for this study is because the methodology involved is applicable to healthcare systems and currently adopted by a number of countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom. The Kotter’s approach is a model that comprises the process of leading change that entails establishment of a sense of urgency, creation of a guiding coalition, and development of a change vision as well as incorporation of changes into the culture.
The patients, especially those in the Critical Care Units (CCU) environment, are highly vulnerable to medication administration errors. This is since there are many drugs given intravenously to the patient especially when under critical condition, making it almost impossible to either detect or correct existing errors by patients themselves. It is important to address this topic on Medication administration errors within the paediatric ward especially the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) since such an environment seems complex and requires high cognitive knowledge for purposes of making the right decisions. Further, patients who are at critical conditions are considered highly susceptible to the various consequences of errors since there are no chances that they compensate for any additional damage due to low psychological activeness (Bedford & Roughead, 2010).
Intended Improvement
The nature of the situation as described and the speed of such change project, requires the adoption of a multiple approach using the PDSA (Plan, Do, Study, Act) cycle as well as the Kotter’s eight step change model of improvement for the purposes of guiding the change project (Berdot, 2013). The Kotter’s model in our case will help provide a list of eight reasons that are capable of identifying points of failure within the hospital change processes and at the same time proposes a process towards successful organisational change which include the preparation stage, action stage, and then grounding stage.
On the other hand, the PDSA is a cycle that operates on two parts, the first part is considered the thinking part that encompasses 3 key questions which entails the gathering of evidences as well as ideas that concerns ...