Healthcare is a critical profession that requires provision of services with accuracy and precision since it involves dealing with human life. The global transitions and the need for adaptation to the changes have contributed to several issues in the healthcare setting. Medication error is one of the prevalent healthcare issues that threaten the provision of quality healthcare services to patients and the entire society. Seeking solutions to medication errors would go a long way in reducing the mortality and morbidity that is associated with this problem. This problem lies directly in the path of duties of nurses and doctors of prescribing and administering drugs to patients and thus should be trained adequately on how to deal with this problem. The use of ideas from peer-reviewed sources in the description of the medication errors, seeking solutions, and identifying proper ways of implementing the solutions by physicians will form the basis of this paper.
Elements of medication errors.
Medication errors contain various elements that aid in its in-depth understanding as a critical health issue in modern healthcare centers. Dosage prescription, diagnosis, medication administration, and wrong treatment strategies for a specific ailment, order communication and drug administration are examples of medication error elements that are harmful to patients. It is important to understand these elements since their comprehension would enable solutions to be easily found.
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Analysis and Causes
Medication errors is a great concern in the health care setting because it could result in mortality, increased morbidity and longer hospital stays for patients. Medication error amounts to professional incompetence and should be condemned in the strongest terms possible. Only competent people should be employed in the healthcare sector to ensure that the problem is avoided. It is estimated that medication errors contribute to about 250 000 deaths in U.SS every year. This is such a huge figure and thus the problem should not be taken lightly.
Causes of medication errors
Interruptions during medication rounds, job satisfaction, and fatigue are the major causes of this health issue. Fatigue can be in the form of mental and physical arising from low staff motivation, a small number of physicians attending to patients, and long working hours (Gorgich et al., 2015). Although the source state that there is no clear relationship of fatigue with medication errors, it is evident that long working hours lead to mental and physical exhaustion that, in turn, contributes to medication errors. Also, job satisfaction contributes to high cases of medication errors. Physicians might feel fatigued due to poor working conditions or the environment. They will be performing duties with low-level motivation (Bolandianbafghi et al. 2017. The situation contributes to the wrong prescription and examinations of a patient, a fete that defines medical errors. A healthcare center might also be unfavorable due to the low number of physicians taking care of many patients. The rush to save lives within a short time contributes to cases of medication errors. Interruptions during medication rounds lead to medication errors. Additional workload to nurses is an example of a disruption during the medication procedures (Johnson et al., 2017). According to Johnson et al., almost 99% of the cases they investigated involved interruptions. The process leads to high instances of clinical errors.
Solution options
Several solutions to medication errors could be applied. There is a need for double-checking of the medical prescriptions by doctors to assist in the reduction of circumstances of medication errors in the healthcare centers (Johnson et al., 2017) . Healthcare organizations should teach nurses to double-check the T-sheets to improve the quality of the provision of medication. Increasing the number of healthcare professionals in a healthcare organization is another solution to medication errors. Also, the introduction of working hours and leave to nurses will aid in perfect rest. A physician who receives complete rest will realize physical and mental balance. A mentally and physically balanced individual will perform his or her duties diligently without errors. The student nurses interviewed by Gorgich and other researchers proposed the introduction of medication calculations to provide the accuracy of the medication prescriptions and examinations (Gorgich et al., 2016). The mentioned solutions will reduce cases of medication errors. However, the perfect solution to medication errors requires another primary strategy.
Proposed Solution.
An application of a competent human resource department that understands the need for the employment of many physicians to reduce the workload and fatigue is a potential solution to medication errors. The human resource department is a vital part of every workplace, such as healthcare, since it will help address issues with the staff promptly (Gorgich et al. 2015). Workers' satisfaction through motivation, quality working environment, and job satisfaction leads to the quality provision of the services. A motivated nurse cannot indulge in interruptions during medical examinations and will apply all his or her skills to avoid compromising any patient's health. Application of ethics by such a human resource department will be perfect since it will be possible to judge what is good and bad for the employees and this will help minimize issues with staff members which will ultimately help curb the problem of medication errors.
Implementation of the possible solution
A healthcare organization must train the human resource department and all its members on the perfect ways of applying serious measures to realize the decrease in cases of medication errors. Training is an example of an implementation process that general managers in healthcare centers can use to ascertain the perfect and quality provision of health services. Since physicians and other healthcare professionals, such as nurses from the human resource team, they will comply with training measures due to the oath of taking care of the patient's lives. Implementation of this solution through training will further expose physicians and nurses to technological aspects such as electronic health records, eHealth, and online health information. Such factors are vital in the reduction of medication errors.
Ethical implications in implementing the solution
Lack of proper motivation among healthcare workers and poor working conditions leads to low rates of reporting of medication errors by physicians and nurses. Many cases of medication errors go unreported, a situation that goes against the ethics of the medical profession. Failure to report such cases is harmful to the hospital organization, patients, physicians, and nurses (Joalee et al. 2011). Hospital organizations will lose their perfect reputations, and patients will develop adverse health conditions, nurses might lose their accreditation while physician and might lose their touch with the societies. Financial loss and illness are the main adverse effect of the lack of application of ethics in any workplace (Choi et al. 2016). Although there are challenges in the healthcare organizational reporting, cases of medication errors should be a priority to everybody involved to ascertain the application of ethics in this critical profession.
Conclusion
Medication errors is, therefore, a critical health issue that requires joint measures to solve. Application of a competent human resource department that can employ many physicians, train them on perfect ethics and implementation of technology, and the need to reduce medication errors will be beneficial to everybody related to the healthcare organization. Since fatigue, demotivation, and interruptions in the medication procedure are examples of causes of medication errors, the application of human resource strategies will form a perfect solution to this menace.
Reference
Bolandianbafghi, S., Salimi, T., Rassouli, M., Faraji, R., & Sarebanhassanabadi, M. (2017). Correlation between medication errors with job satisfaction and fatigue of nurses. Electronic Physician , 9 (8), 5142-5148. https://doi.org/10.19082/5142
Choi, I., Lee, S., Flynn, L., Kim, C., Lee, S., Kim, N., & Suh, D. (2016). Incidence and treatment costs attributable to medication errors in hospitalized patients. Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy , 12 (3), 428-437. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sapharm.2015.08.006
Gorgich, E. A., Barfroshan, S., Ghoreishi, G., & Yaghoobi, M. (2015). Investigating the Causes of Medication Errors and strategies to Prevention of Them from Nurses and Nursing Student Viewpoint. Global Journal of Health Science , 8 (8), 220. https://doi.org/10.5539/gjhs.v8n8p220
Joolaee, S., Hajibabaee, F., Peyrovi, H., Haghani, H., & Bahrani, N. (2011). The relationship between incidence and report of medication errors and working conditions. International Nursing Review , 58 (1), 37-44. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1466-7657.2010.00872.x
Johnson, M., Sanchez, P., Langdon, R., Manias, E., Levett-Jones, T., Weidemann, G., Aguilar, V., & Everett, B. (2017). The impact of interruptions on medication errors in hospitals: an observational study of nurses. Journal of Nursing Management , 25 (7), 498-507. https://doi.org/10.1111/jonm.12486
