Essay Sample on Medication Errors: A Risk to Patients & Healthcare Professionals

Introduction

A medication error is any random event that may cause to unfitting medication use or patient harm while the medication is under control of a healthcare professional (World Health Organization 2016). Medication errors include a substantial apprehension for the patients and healthcare professionals such as nurses. The result of increased medication error is lack of proper following of the set medication process since this process requires a lot of teamwork from innumerable healthcare professionals. The medication process includes recommending, recording, dispensing, administration of drugs, and monitoring and if this process is not carefully adhered to, then medical errors result (World Health Organization 2016). According to the World Health Organization (2016), every year, tens of millions of people suffer from disabling harms o death due to medical errors. The paper will carefully bring to light how the opposing plans of healthcare participants such as executives, providers, patients, and insurers influence medical errors. Also, the paper will discuss how improved communication and systematic technology can be used to lessen medical mistakes in US healthcare.

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How Executives Contribute To Medical Errors

Management problems might, at some level, end up being the causative agents of medical errors. If the employees get overworked and fatigued with workload and time pressures, it may cause adverse medical errors that could be prevented (World Health Organization 2016).

If the management does not ensure that procedures and protocols are standardized, this could bring confusion leading to medical errors. Healthcare management has the mandate to safeguard the physical working environment through safe lighting, temperature, and ventilation are to enhance proper medical services (Anacleto et al., 2005). Therefore, if this is not observed, both the patients and the nurses might end up suffering from medical errors that the management could have prevented.

Lack of enough resources in the hospital set up also contribute to medical errors (World Health Organization 2016). In case there are not enough medicines to administer to a patient, lack of enough ambulances for emergencies or lack of enough employees in the hospital, then medical errors are prone to happen.

How Patients Contribute to Medical Errors

Patient's illiteracy is the major contributor to medical errors in health care. Illiterate patients are not able to read the prescriptions by the pharmacist and physician. That may result in taking an overdose or underdose. Also, the patient may end up taking the wrong drug, thus causing adverse effects to the patient (World Health Organization 2016). These cases are prevalent with the elderly patients; third parties like relatives should be involved to help out. Also, there are cases of the patient being non-compliant to medication intentionally and such are likely to cause the errors too (Donaldson, Corrigan & John 2000),

Patient's personality also may cause medical errors. Patients are just people brought up from different backgrounds with different, and thus, their attitude matters most during the therapeutic process (World Health Organization 2016). Some patients have an attitude, rude to the health professionals which might confuse the nurses, pharmacist and physician s and thus they may end up administering the wrong drug, or if it's a surgery, surgical errors occur.

In cases where patients are ashamed of their medical conditions, they may end up giving the wrong or limited information of their situation to the physician thus the physician ends prescribing the wrong drug and administers as requested. The incident leads to adverse effects on the patient.

Lack of patient's education on the drugs administered is another significant cause of medical errors. If the patients know about drugs, they can notice medical when being administered and corrections done (Anacleto et al., 2005).

How Insurers Lead to Medical Errors in Healthcare

In cases where the involved patients have insurance covers, the hospitals expect payments to be according to the signed contracts. Also, the insurers may have record errors from their end, leading to delay of patient medication or limited medication access. The delay caused by the insurers as they confirm whether to pay for certain illnesses can worsen the cases among the patients who need close attention. Therefore, such happenings may cause death or further harm to the patient.

How Providers May Cause Medical Error in Health Care

Service providers in a hospital set up that are the system management providers should ensure the faultless installation of systems to ensure no technical errors occur leading to the breakdown of communication among departments. That means the pharmacists can access the prescribed drugs by the physicians without any wrong information. If this is not well observed, then medical errors may occur.

Lack of proper labeling of drugs by the providers may build up confusion, and the pharmacist ends up administering illegal drugs with wrong labeling which eventually may cause the patient's death and may not even cure the disease. Also, if the drugs are not well packaged by the providers, for example, wrapping the right medications in the right boxes could result from issuing the perceived right medicines that could lead to medical errors.

How Healthcare Professionals Cause Medical Errors

In Hospitals with no technological dispensing systems, healthcare professional poor handwriting, and use of non- standard abbreviations during prescriptions may lead to administering of wrong medication to the patient (Anacleto et al., 2005). Also, lack familiarity about drug stability while nurses have problems in correlating the generic and trade name nomenclature may confuse and ultimately may lead to medical errors (Anacleto et al., 2005).

Some healthcare professionals may be under stress or in some cases, depression. With the nature of their job, they require to be emotionally stable to undertake their duties well. Therefore depression might cause lack of concentration; hence, the health care professional may end up diagnosing a wrong disease which will lead to improper prescriptions and drug administering Anacleto et al., 2005).

Breakdown of communication during the mediation process among the healthcare professionals is likely to cause dispensing errors .i.e. the physician can prescribe a drug using its generic name while the pharmacist will confuse with the trade name (Anacleto et al., 2005). Therefore the health care professionals should be often trained and educated to improve their knowledge of drugs.

Communication is critical in every institution. In healthcare, proper communication is a basic need, and therefore, every stakeholder: supplier, patients, doctors, nurses, and management ought to possess excellent communication skills. To improve communication, healthcare professionals should ensure that prescriptions are readable. Communication between patients and healthcare professional should be strengthened such that in the case of a language barrier, there are alternative forms of communication devised. On that note passing knowledge about the drugs to patients is recommended (Donaldson et al., 2000)

Technology is the main element that is highly recommended to reduce medication errors. On-screen drug order entry systems are not only useful in healthcare institution but also reduce these medical errors (World Health Organization 2016). In this case, the physician orders the drug through the system, and the pharmacist can access the entry and refer while issuing the prescription. Also, with the computerized and decision support the system should be set in a way that it can offer drug knowledge dissemination, dose and identity checking, order transcription, medication, order tracking and inter-service communication (Donaldson et al. 2000). Also, some medical errors are challenging to determine in the absence of a computerized system.

Conclusion

As much as some medication errors are not preventable, they can be reduced while we can get rid of the preventable medical errors. Patients can formulate charts to guide in the appropriate use of medicines. The medical providers can also provide instructions on how to use particular prescriptions, thus minimizing errors. Offering clear instructions will reduce drug overdose and underdose among the patients at home and in medical centers. It is recommended to allow communication, cooperation, and harmonization among stakeholders in the use of medicines packets. The moral of healthcare specialists should be improved to ensure that the cultures and systems are changed. It is an added advantage if the medical errors are condensed in a health care organization since it will improve financial performance. Employees should also be trained often to keep them updated with the arising diseases. Therefore, minimizing errors and improving communication between the medical practitioners and the patients will help in reducing the mortality rate caused by wrong prescriptions.

References

Anacleto, T. A., Perini, E., Rosa, M. B., & Cesar, C. C. (2005). Medication Errors and Drug-Dispensing Systems in a Hospital Pharmacy. Clinics, 60(4), 325-332. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16138240

Donaldson, M. S., Corrigan, J. M., & Kohn, L. T. (Eds.). (2000). To err is Human: Building a Safer Health System (Vol. 6). National Academies Press. Retrieved from http://www.csen.com/err.pdf

World Health Organization. (2016). Medication errors. Retrieved From https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/252274/9789241511643-eng.pdf;jsessionid=CA9F4B4121CFA9468C1A8DA54A563EA9?sequence=1