There are many tried and tested methods that can effectively prevent medication errors. Nurses should always double check “high potency drugs” is by making your own calculations before administering medicines. These are the drugs that can harm patients seriously if not administered in the correct dosages. Another way to be safe is to take some time between calculations so that the mind is absolutely clear of the previous calculations. There is a better chance of discovering discrepancies if there is time between calculations. A better way to prevent errors in medications is to have nurses checking each other’s calculations so that they can check objectively.
They should then check the calculated dosage against the prescription order and then reverse the process for authentication. Errors usually occur because of some specific abbreviations that are usually misunderstood. Such abbreviations should never be used in for writing prescriptions.
Such abbreviations usually result in under dosages or sometimes double or quadruple dosages being administered. Healthcare professionals should avoid such time-saving practices because they lead to much larger mistakes.
Medication Errors
When such an error does occur, it should be reported immediately so that the error is not repeated under any circumstances. Another major reason for errors is writing a “zero” after a decimal which when misread can increase the dosage by 10 percent which could be lethal for the patient.
A good example is when a prescription is written as .1 mg and is misunderstood for 1 mg because the nurse administering it did not pay heed to the decimal point
Another major reason for medications is not considering other conditions of the body such as decreased blood flow because of renal dosing. Two final sources of medication error include not writing the purpose of the medication and insufficient information for the pharmacist to follow.
Medication errors are committed by most nurses and the most common types of errors are the wrrong amount of dosages and the infusion rate.
This means that the most important reason for medication error was lack of pharmacological knowhow. Medication errors are a major problem for nurses.
Since most cases of medication errors are not reported by nurses, nursing managers must demonstrate positive responses to nurses who report medication errors in order to improve patient safety.
Better training of nurses and better pharmacological knowledge is the best prevention against medication errors because errors can cost the patient his/her life or considerably damage their health. Then medication errors could result in costly lawsuits against the institution which could be very damaging.
