NHS FXP 4000 Assessment 2 Medication Errors

Sample Answer for NHS FXP 4000 Assessment 2 Medication Errors

In recent times, there have been concerns regarding patient safety while in the care environment since patients are exposed to various hazards and events that can endanger their lives and also reduce patient satisfaction. Bodies like the World Health Organization have made several efforts to improve patient safety, and therefore, patient safety is being used as the fundamental care quality dimension (Mieiro et al., 2019). One of such concerns is medication errors which have largely been referred to as any preventable event that can lead to or cause an inappropriate use of medication or patient harm while the medication is the control of the consumer, patient, or healthcare professional. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to formulate an annotated bibliography on medication errors and the current efforts to address the situation.

Interest in the Topic and Professional Experience

As a professional, I believe in the safety of patients and that patients need to be satisfied with the nature or kind of patient care offered in the care setting. The implication is that the nurses and other healthcare professionals need to do their absolute best in ensuring that the patient gets the best. This topic is of interest since medication errors are largely preventable. Recent findings indicate that medication error is among the primary causes of patient mortality and morbidity and that in the USA alone, medication errors cause up to 7,000 deaths every single year while also leading to substantial intangible and tangible costs (Mieiro et al., 2019). Therefore, efforts are needed to explore more robust strategies to control and prevent medication errors. I have had a professional experience with medication errors, where a former staff member was involved in a medication error involving preparation and dispensing leading to medication overdose. The error negatively impacted the Patient’s life and had to be admitted to the emergency department to help negate the impacts of the overdose. The facility was later served with litigation papers followed by a costly court case.

The Annotated Bibliography

The annotated bibliography was created after conducting a comprehensive literature search from various databases. The following databases were searched using relevant keywords; Google Scholar was used as one of the search sites in addition to other important databases such as TRIP database, Cochrane Library, Dynamed, PubMed, and CINHAL.

Huckels-Baumgart, S., Baumgart, A., Buschmann, U., Schüpfer, G., & Manser, T. (2021). Separate medication preparation rooms reduce interruptions and medication errors in the hospital setting: a prospective observational study. Journal of patient safety, 17(3), e161-e168. https://doi.org/10.1097/PTS.0000000000000335

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ThiIS article by Huckels-Bumgart et al. (2021) was written with the major aim of examining the impact of using separate medication rooms on the interruptions when preparing medications and on the rates of self-reported medication errors. This article has been included as part of the annotated bibliography because it is peer-reviewed and explores one of the interventions addressing medication errors. The intervention explored was preparing medications in separate rooms to address the problem of distractions which have been shown to cause medication errors. The researchers used a pre-and post-intervention study directly observing nurses during medication preparation (Huckels-Bumgart et al., 2021). The study took 122 days where a total of forty-two nurses were recruited to participate in the study, and they prepared one thousand four hundred and ninety-eight medications. During the time of the study, a total of two hundred and eight medication errors were reported. Upon the use of separate rooms for preparation, the researchers noted that the rates of interruptions significantly reduced for fifty-two to thirty per hour while the preparation free of interruption substantially increased to 2.5 minutes from 1.4 minutes (Huckels-Bumgart et al., 2021). Worth noting is that there was a significant drop in medication error rates per day as only 0.9 errors per day were observed as compared to 1.3 errors observed before the intervention. This study, therefore, showed that the use of separate medication preparation rooms significantly decreased cases of medication errors.

Lance, S., Travers, J., & Bourke, D. (2021). Reducing medication errors for hospital inpatients with Parkinsonism. Internal medicine journal, 51(3), 385-389. https://doi.org/10.1111/imj.14782

Authored by Lance et al., 2020, this article aimed at determining the efficacy of an awareness campaign and a multimodal education in lowering the incidences of medication errors among patients with Parkinsonism. This article has also been included since it explores interventions for preventing medication errors, hence sheds more light on addressing medication errors. The researchers carried out an audit of the facility’s medication error chats to obtain the baseline data for medication error rates. They then offered the participants an intervention that contained higher priority for patient drug charts, pharmacist review, sticker alert system, and staff education. The baseline data revealed that the medication error rate at the facility was 22.5%, while the complications were found to be forty-five percent (Lance et al., 2020). Upon the implementation of the intervention, the medication error rates significantly reduced to 9%, while the complications due to the errors went down to 38%. Besides, the average length of hospital stay before the intervention at baseline was 13 days. This figure was significantly reduced to 8 days upon the implementation of the intervention. Therefore, this study shows the efficacy of the educational intervention in significantly lowering the rates of medication errors, reducing complications, and lowering the average in-hospital stay by the patients.

Høghaug, G., Skår, R., Tran, T. N., Diep, L. M., & Bredal, I. S. (2021). Three-month follow-up effects of a medication management program on nurses’ knowledge. Nurse Education in Practice, 51, 102979. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nepr.2021.102979

The article “Three-month follow-up effects of a medication management program on nurses’ knowledge” was recently published by Høghaug et al., 2021. The main aim of this study was to explore the impact of medication management programs on nurses’ knowledge of the management of medication. This article was also included as part of the bibliography since, apart from the fact that it is peer-reviewed, it explores ways of enhancing nurses’ knowledge to help lower the problem of medication errors (Høghaug et al., 2021). The researchers employed a quasi-experimental study design where a total of 57 nurses took part and answered multiple-choice tests after three months of implementing the intervention and immediately after implementing the intervention.

McNemar’s test was used in assessing the changes in test scores between immediate post-intervention and at three months. From the analysis, it was noted that at three months, a lower number of nurses answered various categories of questions correctly. For example, questions on observing patients after administering opioids, documentation of opioid administration, and medication administration documentation were all answered correctly by fewer nurses three months after the intervention. However, more nurses answered the question on administering medication with food. These results, therefore, show that for better medication errors prevention and management, there should be continuous training and medication management (Høghaug et al., 2021). In addition, the training and management should focus on the clinical practice routines and theory-based knowledge

Berdot, S., Vilfaillot, A., Bezie, Y., Perrin, G., Berge, M., Corny, J., … & Sabatier, B. (2021). Effectiveness of a ‘do not interrupt’vest intervention to reduce medication errors during medication administration: a multicenter cluster randomized controlled trial. BMC nursing, 20(1), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-021-00671-7.

This article focused on evaluating the impact of an initiative “do not interrupt” on the medication administration error rates. This research has been included as part of the bibliography since it is peer-reviewed and addresses possible strategies for addressing medication errors. The researchers used a randomized controlled trial with 1346 patients and 178 nurses taking part in the study. Data was collected using trained observers using direct observation (Berdot et al., 2021). The analysis revealed various significant results. Upon the use of the intervention, the medication errors related to administration in the intervention group were 6.23%, while in the control group, it was 7.09%. The study also identified risk factors to medication errors as an interruption, unit exposition, nurses’ workload, nurses’ experience, and patent age. In addition, the main error noted during the study in both the experimental and the control group was a wrong-dosage error.

Summary

Valuable knowledge was learned when researching medication errors and formulating the annotated bibliography. One of the points learned is that medication errors are among the top cause of mortality and morbidity among patients and that they cause up to seven thousand deaths in the USA alone. Various research efforts have also been put in place to look for better ways of addressing the situation. The annotated bibliography is composed of four articles that explored various interventions that can be used to address the problem of medication errors. The sources contribute invaluable knowledge to help individuals know more about medication errors. For instance, there is a need for continuous nurse training and education on medication management to result in a sustained effect of lower medication errors.

References

Lance, S., Travers, J., & Bourke, D. (2021). Reducing medication errors for hospital inpatients with Parkinsonism. Internal medicine journal, 51(3), 385-389. https://doi.org/10.1111/imj.14782.

Mieiro, D. B., Oliveira, É. B. C. D., Fonseca, R. E. P. D., Mininel, V. A., Zem-Mascarenhas, S. H., & Machado, R. C. (2019). Strategies to minimize medication errors in emergency units: an integrative review. Revista brasileira de enfermagem, 72, 307-314. https://doi.org/10.1590/0034-7167-2017-0658