NURSES' RESPONSIBILITY in the Prevention of Medication Errors Assignment

NURSES' RESPONSIBILITY in the Prevention of Medication Errors - Assignment Example ‘‘The problem of medication errors can be avoided only when the nurses take a keen interest on their jobs by being highly skilled in their profession’’ (Joint Commission Resources, Inc. 2001, 13). Nurses Responsibility in the Prevention of Medication Errors Have you ever imagined a world where there are no nurses? Individuals would be succumbing to deaths from various causes like injuries to sickness. Nurses’ role can never be underestimated as they play a significant part in saving lives in both public and hospital hospitals since in most cases medication errors leads to ‘‘complex sorrows’’ (Cohen, 2007, 50). This essay discusses nurses’ responsibility in the prevention of medications errors. One of the duties of a nurse is the administration of drugs. Even when the other processes of treatment have been properly completed, wrong administration of drugs can lead to serious problems to the patient. ‘‘Some o f the worst medication errors involve some of the best and experienced practitioners’’ (Cohen, 2007, 49) It is therefore necessary for the nurse to ensure that the drugs reach the patient through the correct route. An example, oral liquid medications meant for administration through a gastric tube have been given intravenously ear drops have been instilled in the eye and eye drops in the ear (Joint Commission Resources, Inc. 2001). Another role of the nurse is patient education. It is the responsibility of the nurse to educate their patients on safe medication use. The patient should be fully aware of what each of the medications are for, the way they should be taken, how it appears, and how they functions to be to help reduce the likelihood of medication errors. Nurses should, therefore, counsel and educate their patients about their medications at all times. Since nurses administer medicines and injections to patients; they are also bound to ensure that there are no dose miscalculations to help reduce medication errors. Dose miscalculations are extremely common medications drugs administered intravenously and medications used for pediatric patients. Studies have shown that errors in dose calculations in pediatric, are not only common but also fatal: mistakes of 10 fold or more happen up to 1.5% of the time (Joint Commission Resources, Inc. 2001). Nurses should accurately apply the three methods before administering doses to their patients to prevent medication errors. They are the basic formula which is commonly used by nurses in most hospitals, ratio and proportion methods which is outdated as it was used before the advent of technology, and the fractional calculation method. Accurate administration of calculated doses assist in the medication administration process as it leads to better quality information with which a doctor or nurse should prescribe a treatment. Nurses are also tasked with admitting and discharging patients; therefore, they are expected to get the information regarding the patients’ history and other medical details. This information is helpful in cases where the patient has an allergy to the same medication he is to be put on. ‘Failure by the nurse to take correct history of allergy can lead to serious problems in the event of administration of drugs that causes allergic reactions to the patient’. The Lesar and colleagues study on factors associated with prescribing errors found out that the allergy to drug rate was 11.7%, a