Nursing Strategies for Reducing Medication Errors

Abstract

Medication errors in hospitals remain one of the most common causes of unintentional harm to patients and are a major cause of errors that disrupt the health care system. It contributes to adverse events that threaten patient safety and lead to a significant financial burden on the health service. Prevention of medication errors occurs at every stage of the drug preparation and distribution process, which is necessary to maintain a safe health care system. One-third of errors that harm patients occur during the nurses' management phase - administration of the drug to patients is a very dangerous activity. Nursing is responsible for the medication management phase, which includes monitoring the effectiveness and adverse effects, and therefore, the professional nurse is likely to reveal the fault of the medication, as it is one of the major responsibilities to examine the medication before giving it to the patient. Nurses are the last line of defense to prevent medication error and catch up with medication errors before they occur. This article describes factors that contribute to medication errors, and also addresses factors that specifically relate to nurses, such as patient severity classification and nursing workload, deviations and interruptions that may occur while taking medication, the complexity of certain calculations and medications, nurses' failure to comply with policies or guidelines. Many of the strategies proposed to reduce medication errors include increasing the number of nursing personnel and adjusting their workload, effective management, increasing nurses' knowledge of drug management and encouraging nurses to report medication errors to prevent them and enhance patient safety.