The Importance Of Medication Errors In Nursing

Prevention of medication errors is an ongoing initiative in the field of nursing. Medication errors jeopardize a patient’s safety, which results in vast costs to correct the effects of the error and it could potentially prevent the reimbursement from insurance companies to the hospital. Often times the nurse is the only person to catch an error with a written prescription or the incorrect dose sent to the nursing unit from the pharmacy. As a result, it is usually the nurse’s responsibility to speak up when an error is identified rather than administering a medication due to the mere fact that an order was written by the physician. While there are many medication errors which occur in the hospital setting, most of those errors, however occur after a patient has been discharged to home (“Severe Harm and Death,” 2016). The issue at hand is to ensure that upon discharge patients are receiving proper education regarding the medications and the interactions their medications may have. The Institute of Safe Medication Practice (ISMP) NurseAdvise ERR published a newsletter regarding errors and drug interactions in patients receiving

(2015) published a descriptive study in Switzerland in the Swiss Medical Weekly regarding the too frequent low-dose prescriptions of methotrexate . Karlen et al. (2015) After analyzing data from a secondary and a tertiary care hospital, it was discovered that at both facilities the prescribed low-dose methotrexate was administered more often than what was necessary. For instance, an example was given in the study of a prescription for low-dose methotrexate to be administered once every Monday (Mo), however due to possible misinterpretations of abbreviations, the prescription may be perceived as every morning (mo) (Karlen et al., 2015). According to Karlen et al. (2015) the administration of low-dose of methotrexate increases the potential for incidences of morbidities, mortality, and elevated care costs (Karlen et al.,