Strategies to Minimize the Impact of Medication Errors
Various stakeholders are involved in policy implementation. These include the management and practitioners, namely doctors and nurses. The management will seek resources to implement the policies and will enforce remote collaboration and evidence based care them at the hospital. Staff members will also cooperate and comply with the policies. With this, the hospital will meet the healthcare metric of patient outcomes.
Research shows that these mistakes can result in longer hospital stays and higher rates of mortality and morbidity. Nurses also experience emotional and mental distress when medication is incorrectly administered. These errors can also lead to workplace discipline, loss of employment, and a negative impact on the nurse’s reputation. Research suggests that education decreases medication take my course error rates. However, many new nurses are afraid to report their mistakes. They may be afraid of losing their license or having disciplinary action taken against them.
Strategies to reduce medication errors include reducing the number of medications that are ordered from the pharmacy, using automated dispensing cabinets that can track drug inventory, and requiring the nursing staff to cross-check the cabinet stock on a daily basis. This will help ensure that the correct doses are retrieved and administered to patients. This will improve the patient’s medical outcome and ensure that all drugs are accounted for at all times.
Counting patient falls and calculating fall rates can help you assess whether your hospital or unit is succeeding in improving patient safety related to falling. If your fall and injury rates are improving, it might be due to improved nhs fpx 6008 assessment 3 business case for change care practices or a reduction in underlying medical causes of falling, such as diabetes.
To calculate fall and injury rates properly, you need to know how to define a fall. Some people in your organization may disagree about what counts as a fall, especially borderline cases, such as when a patient feels her knees give way while walking with a staff member and gently eases herself onto the floor. To reduce the number of mistakes in interpreting and reporting data, this policy recommends that nursing staff be trained to take special precautions when examining patients’ feet or doing HgbA1c testing. It also promotes the use of graphical dashboards and electronic health records to cut down on errors in data entry and interpretation.
The nursing staff at Mercy Medical Center is often overwhelmed. This contributes to burnouts in the workplace, which are primary causes of patient negligence and accidents (Cornwall, 2018). To prevent this, the hospital needs to ensure that a high number of healthcare providers is available at all times. The hospital management will have a significant role in implementing the policies because they oversee the daily operations of the facility. The doctors and nurses as practitioners will also be vital in executing nurs fpx 4040 assessment 4 informatics and nursing sensitive the policy because they are the frontline workers who interact with patients. For example, while doctors recommend post-discharge care, it is the nurses' responsibility to communicate that care to patients (Kang et al., 2018).
This policy will also encourage the use of electronic health records and graphical dashboards to reduce data input and interpretation errors. This will improve the quality of data collected on HgbA1c levels, foot exams, and missed diagnosis rates. Moreover, the policy will promote training sessions for the nursing staff to help them become comfortable with these technologies. Patient safety is an essential element of quality healthcare. While accidents or misdiagnoses do occur, healthcare facilities can implement protocols that mitigate those risks and ensure the health and wellbeing of their patients.
Medical errors are preventable, and the NHS’s efforts to reduce them have contributed to a 17 percent reduction in hospital-acquired conditions between 2010 and 2014. These improvements have saved 87,000 lives and $20 billion in medical costs. Keeping patients safe is a top priority for nhs fpx 6008 assessment 4 lobbying for change hospitals, but it also requires ensuring staff members’ safety. During the COVID-19 pandemic, instituting operational changes that support employees’ physical and emotional well-being can reduce employee injury rates. These include enabling them to take periodic mental-health breaks and improving .
