Understanding Medication Safety

Principles for safe medication administration: • All medications must be administered according to a physician’s orders. • The medication orders must be clear, legible and not open. • The same person should select, prepare, administer and record the administration. • Doses must be prepared for only one patient at a time, immediately before the intended use • Medications should be prepared for immediate administration to a single patient and not retained for later use due to the risks of contamination, potential instability, potential mix-up with other medications and to maintain security of the medication • All medications must be stored in patient care areas in the same container as received from pharmacy. • All RNs and ENs without notation must successfully complete the Medication Assessment Paper prior to administering medications.

If you use one of our vehicles or use your own vehicle as you perform your job, please be aware of and follow these requirements - you may not loan out one of our vehicles to others without permission. You must drive in a safe and lawful manner. If you use a company car for personal use, you must keep the car in good condition. You may not drive the company vehicle under the influence of alcohol, controlled substances, or alcohol. If you have prescription medication, please notify us before you use our vehicle.

I will need to observe the medication administration record, Control drugs record, generic & brand names documents and risk assessment documents. This is important in order to avoid errors while dispensing a medication. Knowing all this beforehand will enable me know the type of medication written on the prescription and where to get them from (fridge, cupboard or the shelves). This knowledge will promote and help to maintain independence in the appropriate way to handle prescription.

Fisher Week Three Response to McConnelly Yvonne, your post was extremely intriguing to me as a community health department is not an environment I have had the privilege of experiencing. Interestingly, the utilization of computerized order entry does not prevent the prescriber from ordering an incorrect medication dose or the wrong drug (Lapane, Waring, Dube’, & Schneider, 2011). Do the facility employ process to assure nurses are checking the medication in order to avoid the administration of an incorrect drug or dosage? Distractions have been linked to medication errors, consequently, and the ability to care for a solitary patient at one time clearly minimizes the distractions and interruptions that a nurse may experience during medication

Clarissa, I would agree that, Certified Nurses Assistants are not medically trained to administer medication and that task should be handled by an LPN or an RN. Just for the fact that administering medications involves more than giving the residents their medication, there are tasks, such as, including reviewing the order; confirming that the medication order is correct; reviewing all warnings, interactions, and allergies; evaluating the patient after the medication has been administered.

Medication errors are defined as faults in drug prescribing, transcribing, dispensing, monitoring, ordering, and/or administration. These errors have significant potential for injuring or even killing a patient. Discussed below is an article that highlights the dangers of inaccurate drug administration. A case was reported of a 7-year-old boy with Fanconi’s anemia that underwent a successful bone marrow transplant and months later returned to the hospital for a minor febrile episode. The night before his discharge he was given 3.5 gm/m 2 of cytarabine over 2 hours, which the nurse calculated according to his surface area.

As a society, we rely greatly on prescription medications to treat medical conditions and alleviate pain. Growing up, I always had the tendencies to avoid medication unless medically necessary. Fortunately, I was a very healthy child that rarely relied on any type of medication. As I got older, I noticed some of my family members having to take medication on a daily basis. I quickly realized that many people need prescription drugs in order to maintain their health when dealing with life-threatening conditions including high-blood pressure and high cholesterol.

In care settings the currently legislations, guidelines policies and protocols relevant to the administration of medication would be: - The misuse of drugs act 1971 - The Medicines Act 1968 - Care Standards Act 2000 - The Health and Social Care Act 2001 The Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 1999 - The RPS Handling Medicines in Social Care Guidelines The recording, storage, administration and disposal of medication must be adhered by employees in accordance with the current policies and procedures. The policies are in place to protect everyone - training must be undertaken or up-to-date before support workers can administrate any medication.

Medication Error Prevention Act of 2000 states: Amends the Public Health Service Act to make medication error information privileged for Federal and State administrative and civil judicial proceedings if the information is voluntarily submitted by a health care provider to a program, approved by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, for the purpose of developing and disseminating recommendations and information regarding preventing such errors (Medication Error Prevention Act, 2000). According to congress.gov (n.d.), this is still a bill in that 02/16/2000, this was introduced in the House by the House of Representatives and referred to the House Committee on Commerce. Then on 02/23/2000, it was referred to the Subcommittee on Health

Without caution, it can be easy for nurses to make numerous amounts of errors when performing medication administration. These errors can potentially be deadly, or cost the hospital a lot of money. It is always important for any nurse administering medicine to abide by the six rights of medication administration. When nurses are working with medications the nurse needs to be focused on the task at hand. It is ultimately up to the nurse to provide their patient with the highest standard of quality