Evidence Based Strategies to Reduce Medication Errors
Making a medication error in any phase of the medication administration process has the potential to be extremely detrimental to both patients and nurses. Medication administration is broken into four phases, prescription, transcription, dispensing and administration. There are many reasons that a medication error could occur including nursing fatigue, distraction, or technology malfunction. The PICOT question “In intensive care patients, what is the effect of implementing evidence-based strategies to include protected time for passing medications without interruptions, signage to remind staff to limit interruptions, and the use of medication administration technology on the rate of medication …show more content…
The study’s aim was “to describe the CALNOC medication administration (MA) accuracy, examine nurse adherence to the six safe practices of MA, examine prevalence of MAE’s in adult acute care, and to explore associations between safe practices and MA accuracy” (Donaldson et al., 2014, p. 58). The study found that 42% of MAE were preventable, with 26% of the errors occurring during administration. Distractions or interruptions accounted for 22.89% of MAE while 13.9% of MAE were associated with not checking two patient identifiers before administration. Overall the research found that deviation from one safe practice protocol is related to 4.37% of MAE (P=.0001). From this data, CALNOC predicts that out of 10,000 MA’s; there will be 27,630 safe practice deviations, resulting in 770 MAE’s. By using safe practice protocols and interventions to reduce distractions during MA, it could result in better patient care and fewer MAE’s (Donaldson et al., …show more content…
Mandrack et al., (2012) discussed automated dispensing cabinets (ADC) and what nurses can do to make the process of using them more safe and effective. This study complied ideas from medication experts to develop an intervention bundle regarding the proper use and safety of these cabinets. The study reports that 50% of medication errors involve distractions, the other causes of errors are due to withdrawing multiple patient’s medications at once, poor location of ADC, and unsuitable ADC configuration (Mandrak et al., 2012, p.137). The study was able to amass twelve main points to make up the bundle regarding proper use of the cabinets by nurses, physicians, and pharmacists. A few of the points included providing the ideal environment, ensuring ADC system security, the use of pharmacy-profiled ADC’s, identifying information that should be on the ADC screen, maintaining proper inventory, and establishing criteria for overrides (Mandrak et al.,
Making a medication error in any phase of the medication administration process has the potential to be extremely detrimental to both patients and nurses. Medication administration is broken into four phases, prescription, transcription, dispensing and administration. There are many reasons that a medication error could occur including nursing fatigue, distraction, or technology malfunction. The PICOT question “In intensive care patients, what is the effect of implementing evidence-based strategies to include protected time for passing medications without interruptions, signage to remind staff to limit interruptions, and the use of medication administration technology on the rate of medication …show more content…
The study’s aim was “to describe the CALNOC medication administration (MA) accuracy, examine nurse adherence to the six safe practices of MA, examine prevalence of MAE’s in adult acute care, and to explore associations between safe practices and MA accuracy” (Donaldson et al., 2014, p. 58). The study found that 42% of MAE were preventable, with 26% of the errors occurring during administration. Distractions or interruptions accounted for 22.89% of MAE while 13.9% of MAE were associated with not checking two patient identifiers before administration. Overall the research found that deviation from one safe practice protocol is related to 4.37% of MAE (P=.0001). From this data, CALNOC predicts that out of 10,000 MA’s; there will be 27,630 safe practice deviations, resulting in 770 MAE’s. By using safe practice protocols and interventions to reduce distractions during MA, it could result in better patient care and fewer MAE’s (Donaldson et al., …show more content…
Mandrack et al., (2012) discussed automated dispensing cabinets (ADC) and what nurses can do to make the process of using them more safe and effective. This study complied ideas from medication experts to develop an intervention bundle regarding the proper use and safety of these cabinets. The study reports that 50% of medication errors involve distractions, the other causes of errors are due to withdrawing multiple patient’s medications at once, poor location of ADC, and unsuitable ADC configuration (Mandrak et al., 2012, p.137). The study was able to amass twelve main points to make up the bundle regarding proper use of the cabinets by nurses, physicians, and pharmacists. A few of the points included providing the ideal environment, ensuring ADC system security, the use of pharmacy-profiled ADC’s, identifying information that should be on the ADC screen, maintaining proper inventory, and establishing criteria for overrides (Mandrak et al.,