Causes And Solutions For Medication Errors In Healthcare Provision

Nurses and Physicians are Responsible for Medication Errors

Discuss about the Safety Culture in Community Pharmacy.

The family reports of errors in the medication of the father. The nurses at the health facility are responsible for the mistakes. The father of the advocate gets two bugs related to the hospital. Additionally, the carelessness by the nurses makes the father develop chest infractions. The physicians at the emergency wards fail to prescribe the dosage to the father.  Other doctors write an incomplete prescription to the elderly patient. The doctors fail to write all the conditions of the patient on the charts. Nurses at times do not read the treatment charts appropriately. Vital care information is missing from the charts. Nurses cannot understand the doctor’s instruction on how to handle patients. Some nurses only look at the first page of the charts but fail to study the proceeding pages as well.

Occasionally, the nurses failed to handover the chart in good time. At times, nurses go home without administering the drugs to the patient. Nurses fail to read the drug container appropriately. Therefore they can give wrong medicine to the patient. Nurses misplace the charts of patients. Thus, the following nurse cannot find the lost table. The nurses are disorganized and spend a lot of time in retrieving a missing chart. In various occasions, the medical staff mixes up the medications, therefore, confusing the patient and the wife. The management of the hospital has assured the daughter of the elderly patient that changes are imminent to correct the errors. Unfortunately, the nurses and the doctors keep on repeating the mistakes.

The doctors at the facility lack medical records of the patients. Additionally, the physicians do not interrogate the patients about their records. The doctors fail to tell the type of medications that the incoming patients are on. The patients do not know the identity of the dosage that they receive from the hospital. Doctors at times fail to offer medication printouts to the patients.

The hospital management should share the blame on the mistakes. The administration has not been strict on the nursing staff. Nurses’ carelessness leads to the clinical errors. The doctors are the other victims as they fail to write down all the medications (Norman et al., 2017). The doctors at times fail to write down the medication. Thus the patient fails to take medicine in the right dosage. The nurses carelessly handle the patient’s chart hence misplacing them. The clinicians cannot read the prescriptions. At times, the nurses cannot understand the bottles that contain the drugs (Ryan et al., 2014). The medical administration promises to rectify the errors but fail to do so. The doctors fail to print out the medical records of the patients. Nurses take more extended hours to recover a misplaced chart. Doctors write unclear prescription notes. Thus, the nurses cannot read them to the patients

Factors that Contribute to Medication Errors in Healthcare Facilities

The nurses are making the countless mistakes when handling the elderly patient because they fear her advocate daughter. The hospital lacks electronic system hence cannot keep electronic records. There is no nurse to move about with a trolley to give out medication to the patients (Patel, & Bergl, 2017). Nurses lack regular training on the issuance of drugs. The doctors do not write clear prescription statements. The nurses are careless with patient’s charts. Moreover, the management is not strict enough and do not closely supervise the staff members.

The errors generally occur almost on a daily basis. The prescription of drugs is a daily affair hence improper order happens daily (Chawla, Goswami, Tayal, & Mallika, 2015). The mother of the advocate visits the husband daily to prevent the human errors. Moreover, the errors are numerous and affect almost all patients in the hospital.

The hospital administration should provide regular training to the nurses to sharpen their medication skills. In training, the trainers should remind the nurses to avoid the errors in prescription. Nurses need specialized training to enable them correctly read the containers of medication (Goldsworthy, & Waters, 2017). The clinicians should go through the entire patient’s chart instead of looking at the first paper only. Nurses should safely store the charts without misplacing them. Moreover, the doctors should write clear prescriptions of the drugs. Furthermore, the nurses should seek clarifications from the doctor if they don’t understand a given medical note. The hospital should use electronic means to process the prescription for patients (McKean, 2016). Additionally, nurses should read all the prescription information without omitting any details. The hospital executive should regularly supervise the nurses’ activities. Moreover, a nurse should be mandated to go around the ward to give medications to the patients.

Any health facility should enact a safety culture to the employees to enable the nurses to offer quality services to the patients. The senior management delegates follow-up team to the wards. The functions of the unit are to oversee the duties of nurses in caring for the admitted patients (Marshall et al., 2017). Moreover, the group ensures that diagnosis and treatment are error-free (Thomas, Ashcroft, Parker, & Phipps, 2015). The family members of the patient do not understand the procedures at the hospital. Besides, the relatives of the elderly patients have high expectations about the hospital. The expectations follow the critical situation of the patient.

Solutions for Avoiding Medication Errors

The patient is suffering from multiple ailments and should obtain high-quality care. The hospital has an insufficient number of nurses. Moreover, there is an increase in the number of patients visiting the health facility. The staff at the ward does not know about the issues that the family is talking about previously. The team believes that the wife is always present and contributes to the decision making about the care of the husband. Other nurses have acknowledged the mistakes that the family raised and are determined to find the route course and eventually solve the problems

The framework is for medical practitioners who want to prepare a training session to learn more about the how to treat patients in the health facility safely. The safety tool applies to both the nursing groups and the hospital as a whole (Sari, 2017).  The healthcare tool is a source of valuable information for safety care. Moreover, the tool assists in the formation and continuity of safe treatment in health facilities (Parker, Wensing, Esmail, & Valderas, 2015). Health practitioners can gauge their understanding of safe therapy and how to implement the culture into practice. The Manchester tool enables the nurses to learn more about offering secure medical attention. The Manchester Patient Safety Framework (TMSF) is applicable in almost all fields of medicine (Lainer, Vögele, Wensing, & Sönnichsen, 2015). Nurses use the Safety tool to check on their developmental safety capacity.

The hospital should emphasize the need for all employees to commit to constant safety improvement. The family members led by the advocate have raised a lot of issues concerning the quality of care in the hospital. Instead of complaining about the understaffing and the increase in the number of patients, the nurses should strive to improve the quality of healthcare. The hospital should prioritize the safety of the patients (Bell et al., 2016). The nurse should not fear the inspection by the advocate; instead, they should ensure that the father of the lawyer receives quality care. The nurses should keep a record of complaints of the patients. Some of the hospital staff complains that they are unaware of the claims by the family. The allegations show poor record keeping by the hospital staff.

After taking records, the nurses should evaluate them. Moreover, they should look at the possible solutions to the errors that the family reported. The nurses should learn from the mistakes that the family of the patient is accusing them of doing to the patient. They should look at practical ways of avoiding the previous errors. Nurses form teams with effective communication strategies (Bell et al., 2016). The hospital should accept complaints from patients and act upon them with accuracy. The management should closely supervise the activities of the nurses. The safety tool emphasizes the need to train and educate the nurses regularly. The training should focus on the need to avoid errors in the provision of healthcare (Parker, Wensing, Esmail, & Valderas, 2015). Additionally, nurses should ensure that they administer treatment with undivided attention.

Importance of a Safety Culture in Healthcare Provision

The health organization should emphasize the need for teamwork in healthcare provision. When working as a team, an individual can identify the mistake by the other and rectify it. The TMSF requires the health facility to understand the fact that health care safety is complicated and requires the cooperation of all stakeholders. Therefore, nurses should not work in solitude as they are prone to errors when working alone. The government, the health organizations, and the health practitioners should join hands to ensure safety healthcare towards the patient (Parker, Wensing, Esmail, & Valderas, 2015). From time to time, the health organization should look on the safety of the patients. The health facility should discover their strong points in the provision of safe care. The organization should put much effort to improve the safety of the patients. The hospital should identify their weakness and come up with strategies to improve. The diverse nursing groups should share their opinions to come to a consensus. The nurses should research on the outlook for a health facility with a culture of safety that is functional (Parker, Wensing, Esmail, & Valderas, 2015). The teams of nurses should come up with ways of improving the culture of healthcare provision.

Carol Jones should instruct senior managers at the hospital to delegate follow-up duties. The follow-up process should target all the department and wards (Ginter, 2018). The team that examines the patient after treatment should report their findings to the Chie Executive Officer (CEO). A small follow-up process is not enough. The CEO should identify the weakness and the strengths of the process (Prince, Comas-Herrera, Knapp, Guerchet, & Karagiannidou, 2016). Carol should invest in methods of improving on the weaknesses while upholding the strengths. Carol should manage the expectations of the patient’s family. She should instruct the heads of the wards to explain to the family about the treatment procedures.

The family should understand that the hospital is facing a scarcity in the number of nurses. The patient’s family should also recognize the increase in the number of patients that the nurses attend to on a daily basis. Carol Jones should use her influential position to hire more nurses. Additionally, she should seek government’s backing to expand the hospital’s premises (Secanell et al., 2014). Moreover, Carol should find stakeholder backing to bring more health facilities into the wards and the health departments. Carol should encourage patients to register any complaints. The ward staff is claiming that they are not aware of the allegations by the family.

Teamwork and Follow-up as Keys to Safe Medical Attention

Carol Jones should encourage the nurses to change treatment for a patient only after consulting the patient and the family members. The patient should contribute to whether the medication needs alteration or otherwise (Bloom, Propper, Seiler, & Van Reenen, 2015). Additionally, the relatives should help the patients in making an informed decision. Whenever the nurse feels that the changes benefit the conditions of the patient, that nurse should inform the patient about the changes. The doctors should tell the patient about their reasons for changing the medication (Wager, Lee, & Glaser, 2017). The changes in medicine have caused deaths in the past so nurses should do it carefully.

Carol should motivate her staff members. Additionally, she should encourage them to attend to patients with more vigor and interest. She should tell the nurses to be keen in healthcare provision to avoid errors in their practice. The CEO should encourage the clinicians and physicians to pay keen attention to the elderly patients. Those individuals who are suffering from many infections should obtain maximum care (Wager, Lee, & Glaser, 2017). Carol should encourage the doctors to write down all the medications. Moreover, the physicians should elaborate the medicines to the understanding of the patients and the nurses. When the doctors are writing medication, Carol should encourage them to jot down a simple script.

Carol should encourage nurses to observe all the patient’s medications. Skipping of a dosage renders it useless. The CEO should help the doctors to prepare complete charts for the patients. The physicians should pay attention to the patients having more than one ailment. Each complication must be on the table no matter the level of seriousness. The doctors should write notes that the nurses can read (Wager, Lee, & Glaser, 2017). If the nurse cannot understand the doctor’s note, they should go back to the physician and seek clarifications. Nurses should never assume any unclear medication; instead, they should consult with colleagues to get a clarification.

Carol Jones should organize a special training session to enlighten nurses on reading the diseases charts. Nurses should consult with colleagues in case of the information in the charts is not bright enough. Nurses should shift their concentration from the first page of the medication sheet to view all the leaves. When going home, Carol should encourage the nurses to hand over their duties to the next nurse. When the nurses are finishing their shifts, they should give medications to the patients (Wager, Lee, & Glaser, 2017). Besides the charts and the doctor’s prescriptions, Carol should offer training on the reading of medication bottles. She should ensure that the containers are well labeled.

Carol should encourage the family of the patients who have a complaint to consult with the directors of the health departments. The heads of department should respond to the allegations and ensure that the patient’s issues receive maximum attention. If the relatives are not convinced by the efforts by the departmental heads, they should be free to see the CEO in person. Carol should encourage the nurses to discharge their duties without fear of the position of the patient or the relatives in the society. Carol should use the hospital’s resources to acquire the electronics records machine. The instrument assists the hospital to monitor the activities in the hospital (Powers et al., 2015). Therefore, the executive members can chip in to prevent clinical errors. Carol should employ a medication nurse to go around with a trolley when issuing medications to patients in different wards.

The Cycle encompasses four steps. [Planning, Doing, Checking and Acting] (Lee, Lei, & Cheng, 2014). The plan is circular meaning that it does not have a destination. The hospital should repeat the steps more often until they find the solutions to their problems. Numerous problems are facing the health facility. The hospital can use the PDCA to solve the failure of nurses to read and understand the medication bottle labels.

The family advocate highlighted the fact that some nurses cannot understand the labeling of the medications. The inability of the nurses to correctly read the labels leads to dosage errors. The errors can pose a severe complication to the patient. Additionally, the misreading can increase the level of the patient’s sickness. On extreme cases, the administration of the wrong medication to a patient can result in a coma and eventually death (Lim et al., 2015). The hospital must come up with a well-thought-out plan to enable nurses to read the bottle labels of medicines correctly.

The hospital management should invest in training nurses on how to understand the labels and avoid the wrong dosage. When the training is a success, the nurses should be accurate and prevent the issuance of the wrong dosage. The training should not cost the hospital a lot of money. Instead, the hospital needs a little amount of investment to carry out the training that takes one to two weeks. Preparation is the best option for preventing errors in medication (Saier, 2017). The management has the other opportunity of closely supervising the nurses to ensure that they read the labels correctly. However, close supervision intimidates nurses and leads them into more mistakes. Therefore, the best way forward is through exposure and training. The hospital needs to seek moral and financial assistance in carrying out the operation. Moreover, the government should assist in training nurses.

The do part is the action part. Here, health facility rotationally trains nurses. All nurses cannot gain training at the same time. The hospital can employ more nurses or call nursing interns to cover up for the nurses during training. The practice should run for a period spanning one to two weeks. The trainers should urge nurses to be keen when reading the labels. A point of note is that nurses are literate healthcare professionals (Chen, Mei, Jiang, & Du, 2016). Their busy schedule limits the time that they spend in understanding the labels. In case the nurse does not recognize a particular tag, consultation is necessary for colleagues to understand medication. The hospital should employ more nurses to lift the pressure on the already present nurses (Larsson, Shima, & Kurisu, 2016). When nurses are working in a pressure-free environment, they get ample time to understand medication. Consequently, they cannot administer wrong treatment.

The hospital should check the outcome of the nurses’ training. Proper training enables nurses to improve their medication skills. The hospital can check the progress by examining the number of complaints by the patients and their family members. A reduction in the number of complaints signals the success of the training (Kanai, 2015). The hospital can collect data from the patients on the frequency of errors in medication. The hospital can design questionnaires and also conduct interviews with the patients. Correct medications translate into improved healthcare. In case most patients are approving of the services of the hospital, the indication is that the training was a success. On the other hand, a lot of dissenting voices indicate the training did not correct the occurrences of wrong medications. A reduction in the fatality rates indicates the success of the nurses’ training. After the checking, the facility should carry out a regular practice if the operation is successful. Additionally, the training should be continuous to eliminate clinical errors in medical attention. In case, of complaints from the patients despite the training efforts, the health facility should look at alternative means of reducing human clinical errors.

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