Medication Errors Essay

964 Words4 Pages
Abstract Medication errors are a significant issue affecting patient safety and costs in hospitals often posing dangerous consequences for patients. It is important to understand that analysis of medication errors can help healthcare professionals and managers identify why medication errors occurs and provide insight into how to make improvements to prevent or reduce them. There are several types of medication errors such as wrong dosage, wrong patient, wrong route, wrong time, or wrong medication. Medication Errors A medication error can be defined as a blunder in the treatment procedure that has led to or can potentially result in adverse effects on the patient’s health (Spath, 2011). This terminology refers to the process of treatment falling below the required standard. Medication errors involve failure to prescribe the appropriate therapeutic drug. In addition, they can also involve errors in the components and the synthesis of the drug. Medical errors can be broadly classified from a psychological perspective into mistakes and skill based errors. They can also be classified from a contextual perspective, in terms of the medicines, time, place and people involved (Spath, 2011). Modal classification is the third type, which refers to the manner in which the error took place, for example, errors can occur by substitution, omission or repetition. Patients’ safety and medical errors represent a subject that has recently gained both public and scientific attention. This is due to the fact that numerous medical errors have occurred, and lately on a regular basis (Jox, Schneider, Borasio & Dietz, 2010). These errors are accompanied by an increased cost in treatment, in addition to a number of moral consequences. Several barriers concerned with patient safety and medication errors have been identified. These include poor leadership and
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