The Nurse's Role In Medication Errors

The Nurse's Role in Prevention of Medication Errors
Many of the main job duties of a nurse revolves around medication and medication administration. With that being said, one of the most common errors in patient care has to do with medication administration. There have been many changes made to reduce the errors that are made during the medication administration process, however there are still medication errors occurring. Nurses are not solely to blame for all medication errors but they do play a crucial role because they are the last person doing a safety check before that medication gets to the patient. Nurses go through extensive training on medication checks during nursing school, as well as, during the orientation phase of where they are employed. Even with this training it is important to remember that no one is perfect and there are going to be errors. Prevention of these errors is one of the main goals in the healthcare field. By looking at what causes these errors, we can start

Even though they go through extensive training to administer medications, everyone can make mistakes. These mistakes do not always harm the patient but some mistakes can cause severe consequences. The goal is to improve methods of medication administration to make it safer for the patients. However, not all improvements are good improvements. With the implementation of electronic charting and prescribing, there has not been much of a noticeable change in the amount of medication errors but there also has not been a significant increase in errors (Jheeta & Frankline, 2017, p. 6). Electronic charting and prescribing is a step in the right direction but improvements need to be made. There are many causes that contribute to medication errors and not all of them are the nurse's fault but with teamwork of everyone in the healthcare field we may be able to make improvements in the future to reduce risk and harm to the