Medical professionals are the most valued and respected individuals in any society. These professionals provide hope to patients suffering from a wide range of illnesses. It therefore calls for extra accountability on medical professionals and doctors because they are needed to be more cautious and careful when executing their duties and medical operations. Regardless of caution and special care observed by health professionals, the number of medical errors arising in the healthcare sector is alarming. Medical errors are referred to as faults or mistakes executed by the medical or health professionals resulting in dangerous and harmful repercussions on patient’s health. Some examples of medical errors include a mistake in the prescription of drugs, diagnostic error, operation error, system failure and surgical error. These medical errors are mostly associated with inefficient treatment methods, inexperienced medical staff, improper documentation and communication and a poor ratio of nurses to patients.
Medical errors do not affect the wellbeing of patients alone but also ruins the reputation of medical facilities and health professions. The implications of medical errors result in increased cost, stressful situations, consume more time, and deteriorate the wellbeing of a patient. Medical errors are problems that affect the whole healthcare system and should be dealt with accordingly (Harris & Peeples, 2015). The main aim of this paper is to outline why it is important to control medical error, the role of nurses in prevention of medical errors, technological tools needed to control medical error, the role of the interdisciplinary team in healthcare, medical errors literature and why the study of medical error is important in nursing field.
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Quality
Medical errors ruin the reputations of healthcare facilities as well causes a lot of implications that affect the healthcare industry negatively. In order to promote the quality of services delivered by the healthcare facilities to the patients, health professionals should work on preventing and minimizing the number of medical errors. There are a lot of benefits accruing to the mitigation of medical errors in the healthcare industry, and they include. Medical errors affect the entire process of healthcare service delivery, and therefore prevention of these medical errors helps to boost the quality of healthcare services provided to patients to impact their wellbeing. Hospitals with frequent cases of medical errors are perceived to hold bad reputations in the healthcare sector, prevention of medical errors will help them to improve their healthcare services delivery, and in turn, it will help the build again good reputation in the healthcare sector. Thirdly, the implication of medical error results in increased healthcare services cost. The only way to minimize the cost is through the prevention of these medical errors.
Health professionals have the authority to compound, dispense, and administer medications to patients. Medications came in different forms and consumed either orally or through injects. Drugs can be dangerous, even when they are intended to improve patient health. To prevent wrong administration of drugs to patient, nurses and doctors should adhere to safety and quality standards that govern medication administration some of these safety and quality standards include, nurses adhering to “the eight rights of medication administration which are right patient, medication, right dose, right route, right time, right documentation, right reason, and right response” (Kahriman & Öztürk, 2016).
Medication safety refers to freedom from preventable harm when a patient uses the medicine. Failure of patients or nurses to adhere to medication safety tends to impact the overall patient health outcomes, and can lengthen their stay in the hospital, increase the cost of treatment and readmission rate. Continuous quality improvement in medication safety is important because the medication is the most common treatment intervention used in the healthcare sector. When used appropriately and safely, it contributes to significant improvement in the wellbeing and health patients.
Safety
Nurses play a significant role in all areas of patient care. For nurses, preventing medical errors is at the forefront of their daily clinical practices. Nurses have a lot of accountability and roles when it comes to the prevention of medical errors. Some of these responsibilities include. Practicing good communication, nurses must be knowledgeable in nursing communication skills. They should be highly skilled in verbal communication, active listening, and written documentation. They should limit distraction when taking orders, performing procedures, and administering medication since any commination breakdown leads to medical errors. Therefore communication is the initial step in mitigating medical errors (Harris & Peeples, 2015). Clarifying orders: mistakes do happen. Although everyone responsible for controlling medical error, a lot of times nurse fails to ask questions to physicians and tend to presume that they might be offended. But in the real sense, clarifications of order save patient lives and prevent medical errors. Nurses should verbal orders when possible. Limit working overtime, working too much, especially over time cause the inability to concentrate and contribute to tiredness. Therefore nurses should find ways to fight fatigue when on service to avoid causing medical errors.
Informatics
Today, technology plays a vital role in the prevention of medical errors in the healthcare industry. Much has been noted about the danger from physicians’ illegible handwriting. Actually computerized physician order entry has eradicated this problem, but the error in data entry is still ubiquitous. Occasionally those errors have a human cause, but technology has been created to solve this problem. Foxtox, this is a system that has been designed to speed data entry and reduce data entry errors. Barcodes: this technology ensures that the patient gets the right drug. He or she is not allergic to the drug and that the drug does not with other medications the patient is consuming. This system helps hospitals to reduce substantially medical errors. Another system is the Irish and Fingerprint Scan. Not knowing the patient's identity, especially an unconscious or a badly injured patient can lead to a lot of troubles for providers in both non-medical errors. When an iris scan is carried out, the system is able to identify the patient's historical health information as well as his identity (Senders, 2018).
Collaboration
Communication breakdown during medical administration has to lead to most medical errors. Interdisciplinary teamwork is an crucial means of assisting communication among health specialists when administering medicine. Working together reduces medical errors arising from wrong medical administration and increases patient medical safety because the entire team healthcare of professionals comes together to coordinate the well-being of a patient.
Evidence-Based Practice
In the United States, the medical error causes an estimated death of 250, 000 this is according to a research carried out by Johns Hopkins. If counted annually, the error arising from medication was the 3 rd prominent cause of death in America in 2016 if counted in annual death statics. Medical errors have been termed as a global problem and are not only identifiable in the US (Makary & Daniel, 2016). In Finland, around 700 to 1700, patient lose their life every year from medical-related errors. In the United States, medical errors happen in all healthcare settings where medication administration to the sick is involved.
Patient Centered
When pursuing a nursing profession, medical error is an important subject. The topic enlightens nurses’ ways through which medical errors occur and what repercussions toward patient health as well as to the healthcare industry. This topic encourages nurses to observe and deliver quality health services that support medical safety and the wellness of nurses.
Conclusion
Medical errors are an inevitable part of the healthcare practices and threaten the wellbeing and safety of patients. Preventing medical error lays out an outline for amendment in medical safety. This paper has highlighted that adequate communication between physicians and nurses, patient health and drug information, technology and role of nurses in medication administering are the important measures nurses should consider in order to medical errors in the healthcare industry.
References
Harris, C. T., & Peeples, R. A. (2015). Medical errors, medical malpractice and death cases in north carolina: The impact of demographic and medical systems variables. Contemporary Readings in Law & Social Justice, 7(2).
Kahriman, İ., & Öztürk, H. (2016). Evaluating medical errors made by nurses during their diagnosis, treatment and care practices. Journal of clinical nursing, 25(19-20), 2884-2894.
Makary, M. A., & Daniel, M. (2016). Medical error—the third leading cause of death in the US. Bmj, 353, i2139.
Senders, J. W. (2018). Medical devices, medical errors, and medical accidents. In Human error in medicine (pp. 159-177). CRC Press.
