Summary
Patient safety and care quality are the health care system’s most vital objectives, directly affecting treatment success and patient satisfaction. Constant quality improvement increases the overall efficiency of health care services. However, several issues interfere with quality enhancement and negatively affect patients’ health outcomes. The severe concern is medication errors, which can occur throughout the health system. This issue implies “any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm,” as described by the National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention (n.d., para. 1). As a health care professional, I aim to highlight the gravity of this problem interfering with patient safety.
I am interested in this topic because medication errors critically affect the quality of care and may lead to minor and severe patient harm. I want to contribute to minimizing the occurrence of such events and improving patient safety and health care quality. Within my professional experience, I have witnessed medication errors made by other medical staff and committed medication errors by myself. Factors contributing to such events were patient overload, hurriedness and distractions. I observed several strategies that helped significantly reduce medication errors, such as double-checking, new technology of medication dispensing machines, and scanning patients’ ID bracelets. Nonetheless, I conduct this research to find more information regarding preventing medication errors and improving patient safety.
Identifying Academic Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
To find and identify academic peer-reviewed journal articles, I used a Summon search engine. This tool conducts a search throughout the university library’s databases. To select relevant articles, I used several keywords: “medication errors reducing”, “medication errors education”, “patient medication safety,” and “preventing medication errors”. The search result was an enormous amount of diverse studies primarily included in the PubMed database. To reduce the number of literature and find the most appropriate articles, I used advanced search. It helped me remove all articles published more than five years ago and not peer-reviewed ones.
Assessing Credibility and Relevance of Information Sources
To guarantee the credibility of the sources, I had an inclusion criterion: to choose only recent peer-reviewed journal articles published from 2016 to 2021. The next step in assessing credibility was to check the authors’ competencies and professional experience related to the medication errors issue. To assess the relevance of selected sources, I examined whether the articles operate with well-known information regarding medication errors. All four chosen articles support recognized and valid opinions and facts. Every source contained a clearly defined purpose as well as relevant data on the medication errors problem.
Annotated Bibliography
Davis, M., & Coviello, J. (2020). Development of a medication safety science curriculum for nursing students. Nurse Educator, 45(5), 273-276. Web.
This article provides an overview of the medication errors issue and highlights the necessity of implementing new teaching strategies. The authors claim a lack of appropriate education on medication safety for nursing staff and provide results of a pilot project of the educational intervention. The authors argue that the curriculum for nurses should provide more broad information than the Five Rights concept. The Five Rights rule is defined as the right patient should receive the right dose of the right drug within the right route and at the right time. However, the authors argue that a new evidence-based high-reliability organization principle would maintain better nurses’ knowledge, skills and attitudes. Their research showed that nurses were highly engaged in studying new safety concepts, received relevant knowledge on medication patient safety, and provided positive feedback on such learning. This study is relevant to the issue because it highlights a lack of education strategies for health care professionals and a need to develop new teaching concepts and principles to improve patient safety and care quality.
Kim, J. M., Suarez-Cuervo, C., Berger, Z., Lee, J., Gayleard, J., Rosenberg, C., Nagy, N., Weeks, K. & Dy, S. (2018). Evaluation of patient and family engagement strategies to improve medication safety. The Patient-Patient-Centered Outcomes Research, 11(2), 193-206. Web.
This study provides a systematic review that aims to investigate how patient engagement can enhance medication safety. The authors claim that most strategies for reducing medication errors are focused on the medical staff. However, patients are also the stakeholders in the medication use process, and patient education can help prevent medication errors. Studies authors included in their review primarily consider older people since they frequently take multiple medications, which is a risk of medication error. According to the article, 55% of participants experience enhancement in medication safety due to patient education and engagement in the medication use process. I consider this study relevant to the topic because it describes patient engagement’s importance in reducing medication errors. This article calls for further research and highlights potential positive outcomes due to patient informing, education, and empowerment regarding medication safety.
Latimer, S., Hewitt, J., Stanbrough, R., & McAndrew, R. (2017). Reducing medication errors: Teaching strategies that increase nursing students’ awareness of medication errors and their prevention. Nurse Education Today, 52, 7-9. Web.
This article states that early nursing students’ education can help reduce medication errors. This study’s core idea is to provide first-year nursing students with sufficient information about the issue and medication error prevention strategies. Beyond pharmaceutical training, a strong emphasis has been placed on teaching correct calculations and measurements and learning in situations that simulate real-life conditions. The authors believe that practicing in authentic simulated environments will help students become more confident and aware of the issue and the nurse’s role in the medication use process. Strategies of this course include detecting medication errors, developing critical thinking, and specific short videos related to medication errors. Those videos contain relevant scenarios of situations in which medication errors can occur as well as methods to prevent such events. I assume this article is relevant to the topic because it discusses the importance of enhancing medication safety through early high-quality education for nurses.
Shao, S. C., Lai, E. C. C., Owang, K. L., Chen, H. Y., & Chan, Y. Y. (2018). Look-alike medication packages and patient safety. Journal of Patient Safety, 14(3), 47-48. Web.
This article discusses how similar packaging or names of medications contribute to medication errors and provides a strategy for local preventing packaging-related errors in the described hospital. The authors argue that medication errors often occur due to look-alike medications, and a pharmacist, doctor or nurse can make such a mistake. The authors conducted their research and found an effective strategy for selecting similar drugs and labeling them with different colors. The article also claims that an integrated approach is needed to reduce the number of medication errors. The authors emphasize the importance of technology presented as automated drug dispensing machines and the necessity of patient education and empowerment. However, they prioritize the elimination of similar packaging and drug names. I selected this article because it discusses the dangers of similar drugs that may confuse patients and health care professionals alike. This problem is a frequent factor in the occurrence of medication errors and should be resolved not at the local but at the state level.
Learnings from the Research
Due to this research, I deeply studied the medication errors issue. I considered selecting only credible and relevant sources by applying library research skills, and I can trust the information received. Selected articles discussed extensively the aspects leading to medication errors and ways to prevent them. From an article by Kim et al. (2018), I learned about the importance of patients’ information and education and can apply this knowledge in my practice. Strategies for distinguishing look-alike drugs from Shao et al. (2018) can also be used in the workplace and are recommended for patients to avoid confusion when taking multiple medications at home. Regarding two other studies, I was aware of the need for the emergence of new teaching strategies but still didn’t realize how many approaches can be valid and effective. Moreover, this research will help me with my following assignments related to medication errors.
References
Davis, M., & Coviello, J. (2020). Development of a medication safety science curriculum for nursing students. Nurse Educator, 45(5), 273-276. Web.
Kim, J. M., Suarez-Cuervo, C., Berger, Z., Lee, J., Gayleard, J., Rosenberg, C., Nagy, N., Weeks, K. & Dy, S. (2018). Evaluation of patient and family engagement strategies to improve medication safety. The Patient-Patient-Centered Outcomes Research, 11(2), 193-206. Web.
Latimer, S., Hewitt, J., Stanbrough, R., & McAndrew, R. (2017). Reducing medication errors: Teaching strategies that increase nursing students’ awareness of medication errors and their prevention. Nurse Education Today, 52, 7-9. Web.
National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention (n.d.). About medication errors. Web.
Shao, S. C., Lai, E. C. C., Owang, K. L., Chen, H. Y., & Chan, Y. Y. (2018). Look-alike medication packages and patient safety. Journal of Patient Safety, 14(3), 47-48. Web.