Barcode Medication Administration System: A Case Study

Medication errors occur every day in the healthcare setting. It wouldn’t be right to make the statement that it is possible to eliminate all errors in the hospital setting, but it is reasonable to say that we have developed a new system that can help reduce the amount of these errors. For a human to know everything about every drug and everything that interacts would just be too good to be true, but we do have a system that alerts us to these type of safety concerns. In a case study a nurse administers 100 times the dose that is needed for a patient. Imagine if something would have been able to alert the nurse before she administered the dose that it was not right. In this paper I will talk about a system that was implemented to reduce medication

According to Truitt et al. (2016) the study broke their examination up into the different phases of medication administration- prescribing or writing a medication order, transcription of the medication into the MAR, dispensing by the pharmacy, administration of the medication, and further monitoring after the administration. According to Truitt et al. (2016) about one-third of adverse drug events occur in the initial prescription phase and another one-third occurs during the administration phase. The one system, called the electronic medication administration record, is beneficial in cutting down the errors that occur in the transcription phase between the nurses and the pharmacy. According to Truitt et al. (2016) implementation of barcode medication administration record and the electronic medication administration record has reduced the amount of errors by 50% and serious errors by 25%. Truitt et al. (2016) also supports that it improves documentation, billing, and public

The study involved 1,183 participants. The five phases of administering medication were used to further break it down. According to Truitt et al. (2016) the error rate decreased from 0.26% to 0.20%, it was concluded that this was significant enough of a decrease to conclude that the implementation of the systems made a difference. According to Truitt et al. (2016) the number of transcription errors decreased from 134 to 66, making this a significant decrease.

In conclusion the study showed a decrease in reported medication errors by 20% (Truitt et al. (2016). The introduction of these systems has greatly changed the delivery of medication in hospitals. Medication administration errors in hospitals put the patient in danger and cause great harm, depending on the severity. It is so important that medication errors do not happen in the hospital. It may not be possible to eliminate all errors, but reducing the amount of errors would benefit