Medication Error In Nursing

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In this paper I would like to share on an issue that had taken place in my clinical practice area. Sadly this is not the first time this issue had occurred, it had been happening repeatedly. I am currently working in a private hospital and I am the person in charge of Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Our ICU is a mixed together with Coronary Care Unit (CCU), we are multi discipline ICU/CCU. As for now we do have sufficient staffs working in ICU with a balance seniors and juniors. Every shift we have a nurse with post basic in ICU to take up the role as team leader. The issue that I would like to share in my practice area is on medication error. Honestly I was very sad and down when it took place. Till now I can’t get myself out if it. The first …show more content…

Various errors invent from natural process of cognitive and behavioural adaptation (Marc, 2004). Medication is an important medical order for healing process and patient care. Administration of medication is known to be one main component in nursing performance and it is an important role in patient safety. Medication errors drastically have an effect on patient safety as well as treatment cost resulting in hazards to patient and families. Administrating medication is indeed one of the most important roles of nurses as errors may inadvertent lead to serious outcome for the patient. The adverse outcomes of medication errors are such as increased mortality, extended duration of hospitalization and increased in medical expenses (Tang, et. al. …show more content…

However, the most common medication errors are done by nurses. Researchers had identified that the reason for this is due to majority of the medication orders are carried out by nurses. In average nurses spends about 40% of their time in hospital just performing administration of medication only. Globally the incident of medication errors is high regardless whether it is developed or non developed countries. Studies had proven that approximately one third of medical complications are caused by medication errors. Researcher had mentioned that every year thousands of people die due to medication errors (Hashemi, 2007). There are several studies done on medication error and these studies had shown that one of the reason why medication error takes place is because nurses are found to approach their own colleagues for information to assist in decision making rather than searching for evidence based resources (Thompson, et. al. 2001, Estabrooks, et. al. 2003, Pravikoff, et. al. 2005 & Konsteniul, et. al. 2006). It is believe that lack of access to policies and guidelines for administration of medication had resulted in poor information seeking habits which contributes to medication errors (O’Leary & Mhaolrunaigh,