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Medication Errors: Wrong Type of Medication

Student’s Name

Institution Affiliation

Date
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Introduction

The ultimate goal of any healthcare professional is to ensure their patients have access to

high-quality and safe care. Nurses often spend considerable periods with patients (Escrivá Gracia

et al., 2019). Such a phenomenon enables them to identify healthcare facility issues that prevent

patients from accessing high-quality and safe care. Once they do this, nurses should be at the

forefront of formulating and implementing quality improvement initiatives. Medication errors

pose a significant threat to patients' well-being (Escrivá Gracia et al., 2019). As such,

baccalaureate nurses should endeavor to come up with evidence-based strategies to address this

issue.

Contributory Factors: Medication Errors

As alluded to in the introductory part of the paper, health care providers have a

responsibility to provide patients with high-quality and safe care. This nature of patient care is

threatened by mistakes made by healthcare professionals, especially when it comes to the

administration of medicines to patients (Escrivá Gracia et al., 2019). Organizations such as IOM

and QSEN have established a couple of safety standards nurses should adhere to when caring for

patients. Despite the existence of these standards, nurses can at times make mistakes when

administering medicine to their patients. According to statistics from the FDA, the agency

receives over 100,000 reports of medication errors annually (Escrivá Gracia et al., 2019). When

these mistakes happen, they can significantly jeopardize a patient’s well-being and outcomes.

Nurses are the ones tasked with administering medication, and thus, they might spend close to

40% of their time doing this. Even though there are numerous medication errors, one of the most

common ones is the administration of incorrect medications to patients. According to Escrivá

Gracia et al. (2019), this medication mistake can be attributed to three major categories of
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factors, contextual, knowledge-based, and personal factors. Personal factors that might lead to

this medication error include; confusion, stress, tiredness, insufficient attention to details, and

decreased sense of commitment and career conscience (Escrivá Gracia et al., 2019). The

contextual factors that might lead to a nurse administering the wrong medication include; non-

adherence to a healthcare facility’s policies due to time constraints and extended overtime work.

The knowledge-based factors include; lack of pertinent pharmaceutical knowledge and

experience and poor patient awareness (Escrivá Gracia et al., 2019).

Evidence-based Solutions

Mistakes made during the administration of medicines can jeopardize the well-being of

patients and increase their healthcare costs. According to a recent report published by the IOM,

close to 98,000 patients lose their lives due to medication mistakes (Wheeler et al., 2018). When

a patient receives the wrong dosage, they have an adverse reaction and poor outcomes is

relatively high. In addition, when this happens, patients will be forced to spend extensive periods

in healthcare facilities, an aspect that significantly increases their healthcare expenses. Nurses are

allowed to make mistakes (Wheeler et al., 2018). Despite this, nurses can use a couple of

strategies to minimize the likelihood of them administering the wrong medication dosage to a

patient. Training nurses can help reduce the chances of them making this mistake (Billstein-

Leber et al., 2018). This training will allow nurses to familiarize themselves with the five rights

of medication administration. Nurses must ensure they always give patients the right drug,

correct dosage, at the right time, using the right route, and to the right patient (Billstein-Leber et

al., 2018). Medication reconciliation is another strategy healthcare providers can use to reduce

medication mistakes. Training nurses will allow them to figure out their role during medication

reconciliation and how to perform them. When this happens, the likelihood of nurses making
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mistakes, patients having to incur additional medical expenses, and the financial impact felt by a

health care facility courtesy of these errors (Billstein-Leber et al., 2018).

As alluded to earlier, one of the contributory factors to nurses administering wrong

medications to patients is when a nurse does not adhere to the established procedures and

policies on medication administration. This factor can be mitigated by eradicating incentives that

encourage nurses to adopt at-risk behavior, adopting incentives to encourage healthy conduct,

and enhancing nurses’ situational awareness. Besides this, health care providers should create an

environment where nurses feel free to report mistakes and near misses (Billstein-Leber et al.,

2018). When this happens, the chances of nurses coming forward will be pretty high since they

know that doing so will not put their careers in jeopardy. When mistakes and near misses are

reported, health care organizations get a chance to identify the contributory factors and formulate

strategies to effectively deal with these factors and prevent their reoccurrence in the future.

Coordination of Care

Guaranteeing the safety of patients during medication administration requires a

heightened level of coordination. Communication between health care providers caring for a

patient can enhance reduce medication mistakes (Rosen et al., 2018). For instance, when a nurse

taking care of the patient is about to leave at the end of their shift, they can list the medications

prescribed to the patient and the dosage. After doing this, the nurse should share this list with the

incoming nurse (Rosen et al., 2018). When this happens, the likelihood of nurses administering

the wrong medication will significantly reduce since the incoming nurse will be fully caught up

on a patient’s medication routine (Rosen et al., 2018).

Stakeholders
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Collaboration between pertinent stakeholders can significantly enhance patient safety

during medication administration. There are a couple of stakeholders nurses can work with to

reduce the likelihood of medication mistakes taking place (Cho et al., 2020). These stakeholders

include; physicians, hospital administrators, researchers, educators, professional bodies,

legislative bodies, patients, and accrediting bodies (Cho et al., 2020). An illustration of this

collaboration is when nurses can engage with hospital administrators to organize training

sessions to improve the pharmaceutical knowledge of nurses. Working with researchers can also

allow nurses to familiarize themselves with evidence-based solutions to deal with medication

errors (Cho et al., 2020).

Conclusion

Medication errors can have numerous adverse consequences not only for patients but also

for health care professionals. When patients receive the wrong medication, the ailment the

medication sought to treat might worsen, or the patient might even lose their life. In addition,

such a mistake can be quite costly for patients, considering they will have to cover additional

healthcare expenses. Even though errors are sometimes unavoidable, nurses can use a couple of

strategies to reduce the likelihood of them making mistakes when administering medications to

patients.
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References

Billstein-Leber, M., Carrillo, C. J. D., Cassano, A. T., Moline, K., & Robertson, J. J. (2018).

ASHP guidelines on preventing medication errors in hospitals. American Journal of

Health-System Pharmacy, 75(19), 1493-1517.

Cho, I., Lee, M., & Kim, Y. (2020). What are the main patient safety concerns of healthcare

stakeholders: a mixed-method study of Web-based text. International journal of medical

informatics, 140, 104162.

Escrivá Gracia, J., Brage Serrano, R., & Fernández Garrido, J. (2019). Medication errors and

drug knowledge gaps among critical-care nurses: a mixed multi-method study. BMC

health services research, 19(1), 1-9.

Rosen, M. A., DiazGranados, D., Dietz, A. S., Benishek, L. E., Thompson, D., Pronovost, P. J.,

& Weaver, S. J. (2018). Teamwork in healthcare: Key discoveries enabling safer, high-

quality care. American Psychologist, 73(4), 433.

Wheeler, A. J., Scahill, S., Hopcroft, D., & Stapleton, H. (2018). Reducing medication errors at

transitions of care is everyone’s business. Australian prescriber, 41(3), 73.