Medication Error Essay

Introduction
The pharmacologic treatment of psychiatric disorders has improved in recent years. Specifically, many new psycho-pharmacologic agents have been developed; some of which have proved to be highly effective. As a result, many acute and chronic psychiatric illnesses can now be treated much more effectively than a decade ago. However, while these new agents have better side-effect profiles than many of the older drugs, the potential for medication errors (MEs) and adverse drug events (ADEs) continues to be an important problem (1)

Medication Error (ME) is defined as any preventable error that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is in the control of health care professional, patient

Although nurses have the central role in this process, it involves a multidisciplinary team that also consists of the physician, pharmacist, and patient. In the acute care setting of a hospital the medication process is complex and time-consuming, occupying up to one-third of the nurses time

Provider related factors contributing to medication errors include clinical practices associated with prescribing, transcription, dispensing, and administration and monitoring (8). In the aspect of medication safety, medication administration, storage and management of medications, and managing adverse events are regarded as crucial domains .When nurses perform mal-behavior on medication administration, it is said to be non-compliance, in turn, neglect of conduct, resulting in medication administration errors (MAE )probably. Therefore, studying nurse’s behaviour of medication administration is very important