Medication Errors

It is one of a nurse’s duty in the medical field to administer medications, this means that one nurse is in charge of keeping track of multiple patient’s medication. Due to the amount of medication administered by nurses, medication errors occur more often than we would like, especially with younger patients. I chose this topic because medications are given to practically every patient that enters a hospital and ensuring that they are administered properly is important to keeping the patients safe. A study was done in a pediatric intensive care unit at a hospital in Zurich to “determine the number and type of medication prescription errors” (Glanzmann, Frey, Meier, & Vonbach, 2015, p. 1) that typically happen in this unit of the hospital. The goals of the study were to learn about the rate of medication errors, the most common drugs involved in the errors and how severely they affected the patient.

Over the course of the study, 1,129 medication orders written and 14% of them had errors.

The most common error made was dosage selection but other errors, like drug selection and drug formulation contributed to that percentage as well. Due to the fact that this study was done in a pediatric unit of the hospital, it is possible that the rate of error is higher than it would be in other units of a hospital servicing different patients because “calculations are often more complex” (Glanzmann et al., 2015, p. 8) with children because they typically requires you to consider their weight. In situations such as this it is easier to make calculation mistakes because the dosage amount is unique to each

patient.
The study also found that there were certain types of drugs that were more prone calculation errors. Antihypertensives, antimycotics and nasal preparation drugs all had error rates of 50%. These drugs were not prescribed very often so they were “less know therefore more prone to error.” (Glanzmann et al., 2015, p. 7) However, out of all the medications prescribed overall, analgesics has the highest rate of error with 14%, but they were also the most prescribed type of medication. The severity of these medication errors on patients were documented and it was found that 70% of the errors made “required interventions and/or resulted in patient harm” (Glanzmann et al., 2015, p. 4) and the other 30% did not.
Errors in medication are considered a patient safety issue because it can directly put the patient at risk. Having too much or not enough of a drug can cause the patient harm or lead to other issues. Prescribing the wrong drug can potentially worsen a patient’s situation. It can also become a safety issue if a patient is on multiple drugs and it is not properly investigated if those drugs can be taken simultaneously. Medication is a vital part to keeping a patient healthy and assisting them in getting better but one wrong dosage calculation or drug choice can send a patient down a pathway of long recovery.
Medication errors can be avoided by healthcare providers by being very vigilant and paying great attention to what amount and type of medication a patient is receiving. Having the proper education in hospitals for healthcare providers who administer medication will also reduce the amount of errors made. If a medication error does occur it is important to respond accordingly and avoid making the same mistake twice. Overall, healthcare providers should take the time to read medication labels thoroughly, double check that they have calculated the dosage correctly and make sure that if the patient is on multiple drugs that they can be administered at the same time without causing harm to the patient so that the risk of making an errors are reduced.