Medication Error Reduction Strategies
Contents |
StatisticsEventsMagazinePast IssuesBlogSubscribeFor EmployersMedia KitPost a JobRegisterFAQsPost a Job Select Page 10 Strategies for Preventing Medication Errors by Dexter Vickerie | Dec 31, 2015 | Blog | 0 comments It
Preventing Medication Errors In Nursing
is important for all nurses to become familiar with various strategies ways to prevent medication errors to prevent or reduce the likelihood of medication errors. Here are ten strategies to help you
How To Prevent Medication Errors In Hospitals
do just that.1. Ensure the five rights of medication administration. Nurses must ensure that institutional policies related to medication transcription are followed. It isn’t adequate to medication error prevention for healthcare providers transcribe the medication as prescribed, but to ensure the correct medication is prescribed for the correct patient, in the correct dosage, via the correct route, and timed correctly (also known as the five rights).2. Follow proper medication reconciliation procedures. Institutions must have mechanisms in place for medication reconciliation when transferring a patient from one how to reduce medication errors by nurses institution to the next or from one unit to the next in the same institution. Review and verify each medication for the correct patient, correct medication, correct dosage, correct route, and correct time against the transfer orders, or medications listed on the transfer documents. Nurses must compare this to the medication administration record (MAR). Often not all elements of a medication record are available for easy verification, but it is of paramount importance to verify with every possible source—including the discharging or transferring institution/unit, the patient or patient’s family, and physician—to prevent potential errors related to improper reconciliation. There are several forms for medication reconciliation available from various vendors.3. Double check—or even triple check—procedures. This is a process whereby another nurse on the same shift or an incoming shift reviews all new orders to ensure each patient’s order is noted and transcribed correctly on the physician’s order and the medication administration record (MAR) or the treatment administration record
Let’s resolve to do better, highlighted the fact that, despite error-prevention efforts, look-alike drug names, sound-alike drug names, and look-alike packaging continue to be a common source of medication errors. Selecting the best error-prevention strategies
Reducing Medication Errors In Nursing Practice
is not an easy task. Even when system-based causes such as look- and sound-alike medication error prevention strategies issues have been identified, it may be unclear which error-prevention strategies will be most effective. Listed below and in Table 1
Medication Errors Articles
are examples of error-prevention strategies in order of effectiveness for creating lasting system changes for safe medication use. Those listed first are more powerful because they focus on changes to the system in which individuals http://minoritynurse.com/10-strategies-for-preventing-medication-errors/ operate. As the list descends, strategies that target system changes, but rely in some part on human vigilance and memory are presented. Strategies toward the end are familiar and often easy to implement, but rely entirely on human vigilance. Fail-safes and constraints are among the most powerful and effective error-prevention strategies. They involve true system changes in the design of products or how individuals interact within the system. Examples outside https://www.ismp.org/newsletters/ambulatory/archives/200602_4.asp of healthcare would include the inability to start a car while the gearshift is in reverse or using fingerprint verification to enter a building or computer system. At a community pharmacy where the pharmacy computer system is integrated with the cash register, a fail-safe would prevent the clerk from “ringing up” the prescription unless final verification by a pharmacist was noted in the system. Forcing functions are procedures that create a “hard stop” during a process to help ensure that important information is provided before proceeding; often referred to as a “lock and key” design. For example, an electronic prescribing system in a physician’s office that requires the indication to be entered for each medication before it is processed and sent to the pharmacy; a pharmacy computer system that prevents overriding selected high-alert messages without a notation (e.g., entry of the patientspecific indication for selected error-prone medications); or a bar-code scanning system that does not allow final verification of a product without a positive match between the selected product and the profiled medication. Automation and computerization of medication-use processes and tasks can lessen human fallibility by limiting reliance on memory. Examples include use of electronic prescribing software that includes clinical decision support; pharmacy computer systems that can r
Health Search databasePMCAll DatabasesAssemblyBioProjectBioSampleBioSystemsBooksClinVarCloneConserved DomainsdbGaPdbVarESTGeneGenomeGEO DataSetsGEO ProfilesGSSGTRHomoloGeneMedGenMeSHNCBI Web SiteNLM CatalogNucleotideOMIMPMCPopSetProbeProteinProtein ClustersPubChem BioAssayPubChem CompoundPubChem SubstancePubMedPubMed HealthSNPSparcleSRAStructureTaxonomyToolKitToolKitAllToolKitBookToolKitBookghUniGeneSearch termSearch Advanced Journal list Help Journal ListBr https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2723209/ J Clin Pharmacolv.67(6); 2009 JunPMC2723209 Br J Clin Pharmacol. 2009 Jun; 67(6): 681–686. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2125.2009.03427.xPMCID: PMC2723209Medication errors: prevention using information technology systemsAbha AgrawalDepartment of Clinical Medicine and Medical Informatics, State University of New York Downstate, Brooklyn, NY, USACorrespondence Professor Abha Agrawal, Department of Clinical Medicine and Medical Informatics, State University of New York Downstate, medication error Brooklyn, NY 11203, USA. Tel: +1-718-245-3980 Fax: +1-718-245-5347 E-mail: moc.liamg@ahba.lawargaAuthor information ► Article notes ► Copyright and License information ►Received 2009 Feb 9; Accepted 2009 Mar 18.Copyright Journal compilation © 2009 The British Pharmacological SocietyThis article has been cited by other articles in PMC.AbstractGiven the high frequency of medication errors with resultant patient harm medication errors in and cost, their prevention is a worldwide priority for health systems.Systems that use information technology (IT), such as computerized physician order entry, automated dispensing, barcode medication administration, electronic medication reconciliation, and personal health records, are vital components of strategies to prevent medication errors, and a growing body of evidence calls for their widespread implementation.However, important barriers, such as the high costs of such systems, must be addressed through economic incentives and government policies.This paper provides a review of the current state of IT systems in preventing medication errors.Keywords: CPOE, decision support, electronic health record, health information technology, medication errors, patient safetyA substantial body of evidence from international literature points to the risks posed by medication errors and the resulting preventable adverse drug effects. In the USA, medication errors are estimated to harm at least 1.5 million patients per year, with about 400 000 preventable adverse events [1]. In Australian hospitals about 1% of all patients suffer an adverse event as