We all have experienced whether personally or heard a story second hand from a loved one or a friend of prescription snafu. One evening I started feeling tired, through dinner the feeling of tiredness increased, by the time dinner was over and we were cleaning up I was struggling, the feeling of tiredness was overwhelming, my thinking was muddled and I had a hard time with moving my body. It wasn’t until I missed the sink while trying to place an unfinished glass of ice tea on it. Glass and liquid shattered on the floor, on the cabinets and on my feet, did I decide it was time to lie down. I woke up 16 hours later feeling groggy, when I went to the bathroom I saw the pain killers that I took the evening before, I picked up the bottle and …show more content…
Such events may be related to professional practice, health care products, procedures, and systems, including prescribing; order communication; product labeling, packaging, and nomenclature; compounding; dispensing; distribution; administration; education; monitoring; and use." (PSO). The CDC also recognizes that medication errors pose a threat to public health. The CDC estimates that “700,000 emergency department visits and 120,000 hospitalizations are due to ADEs annually, resulting in an estimated $3.5 billion in extra medical costs every year! At least 40% of the costs of ambulatory ADEs are thought to be preventable.” (PSO) Adverse drug events are a leading cause of mortality in the United States. 82% of American adults take at least one medication and 29% take five or more medications. Prevention of risk associated with of medication is to improving quality of health, maintaining life, and decreasing he cost of associated medical expenses. There are many entities within the healthcare environment, (government, providers, non-profit and oversight committees) working to reduce medication errors. One such government entity is the Patient Safety Organization and the …show more content…
A listing of possible medications that a patient maybe taking including drug name, dosage, frequency and route will be compared at each step in the coordination points. This medication reconciliation process is a federally recognized standard and its goal is to provide correct medications for the patients at each step in the transfer process. Utilize Pharmacist expertise – In a Connecticut study, Pharmacist worked with Medicaid patients to help manage the patient’s medications. “The pharmacists found 917 drug therapy problems, resolved almost 80% of them after 4 encounters, and saved an estimated $472 per patient on medical, hospital, and emergency department costs.” (Results) Accountable Care Organizations are using Pharmacists to help resolve the two most common drug therapy problems 1) additional drug therapy is required for prevention, efficiency or palliative care. 2) drugs need to be calibrated in order to achieve the intended therapy
For my research paper, I will be discussing the impact of medication errors on vulnerable populations, specifically the elderly. Technology offers ways to reduce medication errors using electronic bar-coding medication administration (BCMA) systems. However, skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) are not using these systems. Medication is still administered with a paper or electronic medication administration record (eMAR), without barcode scanning. In contrast, every hospital I have been in: as a patient, nursing student, and nurse uses BCMA systems. The healthcare system is neglecting the elderly. Nursing homes should use BCMAs to reduce the incidents of medication errors.
Medication errors in children alone are alarming, but throw an ambulatory care setting into the mix and it spells disaster. When it comes to children and medication in the ambulatory care setting, the dosage range is drastically out of range compared to those that are treated in the hospital setting (Hoyle, J., Davis, A., Putman, K., Trytko, J., Fales, W. , 2011). Children are at a greater risk for dosage errors because each medication has to be calculated individually, and this can lead to more human error. The errors that are occurring are due to lack of training, dosage calculation errors, and lack of safety systems. Medication errors in children who are receiving ambulatory care can avoided by ensuring correct dosage calculation, more in-depth training of personal and safety systems in place.
The evidenced based problem that was identified for this research assignment, was that nurses were causing multiple medication errors in a clinical and practice setting. According to the authors Wolf, Hicks, and Serembus (2006), a medication error is defined as any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is in the control of the health care professional, patient, or consumer. It is very important for experienced nurses and nursing professors to identify medication errors to prevent them from harming the patient. Some of the errors that were identified were not reported because registered nurses didn’t want their peers to think they were irresponsible (Unver, Tastan, & Akbayrak, 2012). Nurse shaming did not help increase positive outcomes of reporting errors among nursing students and registered nurses (Harding & Petrick, 2008). When medication errors were reported they were not being reported properly, and the consequences for improper reporting were not taken seriously.
Milani, Oleck and Lavie reported that Medical errors are the eighth leading cause of death in the hospitals. About 44,000 to 98,000 people die each year from adverse effects from medication errors, 1 million annually die in
This service is experienced, documented, evaluated and paid for as Pharmaceutical Care. Pharmaceutical Care consists of a philosophy of practice, patient care process as well as a patient management system. Pharmaceutical Care has common integrated vocabulary consistent with other patient care practices such as medicine, dentistry and nursing. Philosophy of pharmaceutical care consists of a description of the social need for the practice, a concise and clear statement of individual practitioner responsibilities to meet this social need, the expectation to be patient-centered and the requirement to function within the caring paradigm. This philosophy of practice is expected and practiced by all health care professionals. The patient care processes must be consistent with the patient care processes of all other health care providers. These processes include the assessment of the client’s pharmaceutical needs, a health care plan that is constructed to meet the specific needs of the client and a process in which evaluates the health care plan to gauge the efficacy of decisions made and actions taken. Pharmaceutical care management system includes all resources needed to manage the client’s needs, which include the space provided, such as a clinic or hospital, an appointment system for patients, appropriate and ethical documentation, reporting of patient care, evaluation of decisions made and actions taken and payment of service
I learned a lot from this experience. As I mentioned earlier first time when I saw pharmacist doing medication reconciliation I felt it is difficult task to do and hence I started getting more information about medication reconciliation from my friends and pharmacist whenever I got a chance. I prepared myself before I expose myself in this area, which helped me to gain more confidence when I was performing medication reconciliation with standardized patient. I learnt how important is Pharmacist role in finding and solving medication related discrepancies. From this activity, I learnt that it is very important to communicate effectively with patients and other health care providers. If I am unable to communicate properly I will not be able to
A medication error is any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or harm to a patient (NCCMERP 2014). The death rate for medication errors averages around 7,000 deaths per year. Lawsuits for medication errors were mainly made against registered nurses because nurses are the last people to check a medication before it is administered. 426 medication error related lawsuits were made against registered nurses. (RightDiagnosis 2014).
Wright, A., FebloWitz, J., Phansalkar, S., Liu, J., Wilcox, A., Keohane, C., … Bates, D. (2012). Preventability of adverse drug events involving multiple drugs using publicly available clinical decision support tools. American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, 69, 221-227.
It is shocking to know that every year 98000 patients die from medical errors that can be prevented(Kohn, L. T., Corrigan, J. M., & Donaldson, M. S. (Eds.), 2000). Medical errors are not a new issue in our healthcare system; these have been around for a long time. Hospitals have been trying to improve quality care and patients safety by implementing different strategies to prevent and reduce medical errors for past thirty years. Medical errors are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer in America (Allen, 2013). In addition medical errors are costing our healthcare system an estimated $735 billion to $980 billion (Andel, Davidow, Hollander, & Moreno, 2012).
Baccalaureate nurses are responsible for providing and ensure our patients safety. The knowledge from others mistakes can help informs nurses of extra precautions that we can take to ensure our patient’s safety. Risk Analysis and Implication for practice course helped me understand the steps I as a nurse can take as well as the facilities I work for to help reduce the number of medication errors that occur. Interviewing the pharmacist help me get a better insight to what facilities already have in place to help prevent medication errors. However like most things you have to have educated and compassionate caring staff to enforce and follow the guidelines set in place.
The service of Medication Therapy Management (MTM) is designed to maximize collaboration among different healthcare providers such as pharmacists, physicians, nurses and other healthcare professionals to reach the safest and effective use of medications which improve the patient outcomes. According to Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003, the main goal is to improve patient’s comprehension of appropriate medication use, increase the patient compliance to the medication regimen, and improve identifying the adverse drug events. MTM service model is built on five core elements focusing on complete assessment and evaluation of the patient’s medication therapy regimen through patient-centered care service and to optimize
Accurate medication documentation is a critical step in safe care transitions. When a patient is admitted to the hospital, a member or members of the healthcare team must identify the patient’s current home medication regimen. This process is called medication reconciliation and should be done at every transition of care (Peinado, Silveira, Vargas, & Vicedo, 2016). Incomplete or inaccurate medication documentation can be harmful if a physician orders the wrong type of medication or if a chronic medication is omitted from the orders. These are examples of medication discrepancies.
In the years of 2007 to 20112 the U.S. Centers for Disease Control conducted a survey on prescription drug usage. They reported that 49% of the people in the U.S. had taken at least one prescription drug in the past months, and around 22% had taken more than one prescription drug in the same time period. This percentage of people was significantly larger than the same research data founded over a decade earlier. Prescription were made for many important medicinal reasons that span in severity like: prevention and care for chronic diseases to painkillers for chronic/temporary pain. Because the use of drugs has become so widespread and easily accessible, the dangers of taking drugs that can adverse effects other than the listed side effects has increased exponentially. These adverse effects largely have to do with the netics of the person consuming the drug.
CARE GIVER: Pharmacists must provide caring services of the highest quality, and must view their practice as integrated and continuous with those of the health care system and other health professionals. DECISION MAKER: The foundation of the pharmacist’s work must revolve around accurate decisions made or taken regarding appropriate, efficacious, safe, and cost-effective use of resources (e.g., personnel, medicines, chemicals, equipment, procedures, and practices). Pharmacists must also play a pivotal role in setting medicines policy both at the local and national levels. The pharmacist must thus, possess the ability to evaluate, synthesize data and information, and decide upon the most appropriate course of action.
According to American Nurse Today (2015, pg. 18), one of the most common healthcare mistakes is related to medication errors. In the United States, medication errors have caused hospital stays to lengthen and medical expenses to increase. Each