Medication errors Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Medication errors - Essay Example inistration requiring higher skills like the intravenous route, but occur even when medications are administered through the simpler non-intravenous route (Ghaleb et al, 2006). Tang, Sheu, Yu, Wei, and Chen, 2007, report that among physicians, pharmacists and nurses, who make up the chain of healthcare professionals involved in the use of drugs for therapeutic reasons, the contribution of nursing professionals to medication errors is high, even though they are only involved in the administration of the drugs. They fall back on a multidisciplinary committee analysis of 441 medication errors in a hospital in the United Kingdom. The report of the committee showed that nurses were responsible for twenty-two percent of these errors and that twenty-five percent of these errors were medication errors. The authors provide additional information on the background of the nursing professionals involved in medication errors. More than ninety percent of medication errors occurred after graduation from a nursing school, with more than thirty percent of the errors occurring in nursing professionals, who had graduated in the previous year. The average length of work exper ience was found to be 2.2 years with a plus or minus error of 0.7. More than half of these errors occur in large teaching hospitals or medical centers, while 36.1% of the errors occurred in regional hospitals and 12.5% in local hospitals. The more significant medication errors within a hospital were the intensive care units and the medical wards. Data on the break up of the types of errors is also provided. Wrong dose makes up the highest percentage of medication errors at 36.1%, followed by wrong drug at 26.4%. The other types of medication errors involved were wrong time at 18.1%, wrong patient at 11.1%, wrong route 8.3%. Wrong administration of antibiotics made up 38.9% of the medication errors. The medication errors regarding the administering of electrolytes were 8.4%, analgesics 6.9%, anti-diabetics 6.9%