Plan of action on increased medication errors
Medication errors are a significant safety issue in healthcare, and the hospital has been experiencing a rise in them lately. There have been four incidences in the last one month of medication errors. Medication errors undermine the culture of safety advocated by healthcare as they amount to a considerable amount of harm to the patient and lead to poor patient outcomes (Assiri et al., 2018). Medication errors have been linked to sentinel events on a larger scale, including accounting for over four billion and costing 20 billion and over 100,000 deaths annually (Rodziewicz & Hipskind, 2020). At the same time, most of the medication errors occur at the prescription stages, and 47% of the errors can be prevented (Elden & Ismail, 2016). Despite the incidence and adverse outcomes, most medication errors are considered preventable through proper and effective interventions.
The critical action plan should thus focus on effective reporting and identification of medication errors areas of risk followed by active management of the areas to reduce medication risk and reduce vulnerabilities to medication errors. The management should include reviews and reconciliation of medication at the prescription stage and other identified error-risk areas. The practitioners and patient need to be educated on medication from their role and responsibility in medication administration to curb errors from both sides. Use of Automated information systems, particularly the Computerized provider order entry CPOE has also been proven to reduce medication errors by over 48% (world Health Organization, 2016). Combining several of the proposed interventions and in every medication, the process advances the results and boost the reduction rate of medication errors in the organization. Applying such interventions in the organization will help reduce medication errors and uphold the healthcare culture of safety.
References
Assiri, G. A., Shebl, N. A., Mahmoud, M. A., Aloudah, N., Grant, E., Aljadhey, H., & Sheikh, A. (2018). What is the epidemiology of medication errors, error-related adverse events and risk factors for errors in adults managed in community care contexts? A systematic review of international literature. BMJ Open, 8(5), e019101. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2017-019101
Elden, N. M., & Ismail, A. (2016). The Importance of Medication Errors Reporting in Improving the Quality of Clinical Care Services. Global journal of health science, 8(8), 54510. https://doi.org/10.5539/gjhs.v8n8p243
Rodziewicz, T. L., & Hipskind, J. E. (2020). Medical error prevention. In StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing.
World Health Organization (2016), Medication errors. Retrieved from https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/252274/9789241511643-eng.pdf;jsessionid=FDB1BE2683396D2DA592F947714EBF5E?sequence=1