Safety in Nursing Practice- Understanding Medication Errors and Their Prevention

Safety in Nursing Practice- Understanding Medication Errors and Their Prevention

Safety in nursing includes all efforts aimed at preventing physical and emotional harm to patients. The main focus of safety in nursing is to eliminate hazards and risks that lead to patient harm and ensure all care efforts help achieve the best health outcomes and patient experiences. It is also focused on protecting nurses from workplace violence from patients or other staff to ensure their satisfaction and engagement and further enhance patient safety (Liu et al., 2019).

In the article, “Investigating safe nursing care and medication safety competence in nursing students: a multicenter cross-sectional study in Iran” by Mohebi et al., published recently in 2024, the authors explore safety in nursing care and competencies for safe medication among nursing studies with a focus on nursing practice in Iran. The broad focus of the article is patient safety as related to medication errors, patient falls, nurse needle stick injuries, patient identification, and communication breakdown. The subtopic of focus in the article is medication safety and medication errors. The authors argue that medication errors remain significant safety concerns in healthcare settings. Medication errors are identified as a result of mistakes that occur during medication prescription, dispensation, and administration. Such medication errors pose substantial risks to the safety and well-being of the patient (Mohebi et al., 2024). Additionally, the authors argue that medication safety competence is an essential clinical skill among nursing students that potentially improves nursing care and medication safety. Notably, up to 9,000 Americans die annually due to medication errors, with over $40 billion loss in the healthcare system due to medication error-associated injuries (Tariq et al., 2023). LynneEkkens and AnnGordon (2022) note that over 100,000 patients are harmed by preventable medication errors, especially at the point of administration. This paper discusses the importance of medication safety in nursing care and the roles that nursing students play in promoting safe medication practices.

Safety in Nursing

Considering safety throughout the medication process in nursing care is very important due to the direct impact medication errors have on patients and the nurses involved. According to Mohebi et al. (2024), errors in the medication process are a major cause of patient harm and injury in healthcare settings. Such errors contribute to morbidity and mortality and prolonged hospital stays, which further contribute to higher care costs. For most medication errors, precisely 10–80% of reported medication errors are related to nursing. As highlighted by Mohebi et al. (2024), nursing students mostly lack the necessary competencies required for safe medication practices, which may contribute to the high prevalence of such errors among nurses. This necessitates the need to equip nursing students with safer nursing and medication skills for better patient outcomes.

There are various ways in which medication safety is used to help reduce and prevent medication errors in nursing. One way safety is used in nursing to prevent and reduce medication errors is by ensuring accuracy during medication by observing safe medication procedures to avoid and prevent any cases of errors at the point of medication administration. Safety in the medication process in nursing practice is also achieved through the use of multidisciplinary cooperation and teamwork (Mohebi et al., 2024). Collaboration and teamwork during the medication process can identify and flag potential risks to medication safety. Another example of how safety is used and ensured in the medication process to reduce and prevent medication errors, especially among nursing students, is to continually learn about safe medication practices. This will help improve their medication safety competence to reduce the rate of medication error occurrence among nursing students.

Subsequently, compromising medication safety has significant negative impacts on patient safety and other factors that influence treatment outcomes. According to Mohebi et al. (2024), compromising medication safety leads to medication-related patient injuries and harm, negative patient outcomes, longer hospital stays, and increased healthcare costs.

Personal Perspective

From a personal perspective, safety is very important in nursing for several reasons. Firstly, it contributes to the quality of nursing care. As per my knowledge, quality care can help achieve better treatment outcomes, better patient experiences and satisfaction, patient trust, and even better outcomes for the nurse. It also influences how a health facility is perceived in the markets; therefore, its ability to draw and maintain clients impacts its performance. As a future nurse, I will promote medication safety by adhering to medication administration practices, always rechecking and reconfirming all medications against the patient, utilizing medication administration assistance technologies, and collaborating with other health professionals during medication administration.

Conclusion

Safety in nursing aims to mitigate risks that impact patient safety. Medication errors, as presented by Mohebi et al., are prevalent among nursing students due to a lack of sufficient medication safety competence. The article has highlighted the gaps in safe nursing care practices and medication safety competence among nursing students in Iran, the importance of safe nursing care, and strategies to improve such competencies and practices among nursing students. Notably, through developing competencies in safe nursing care and medication safety, student nurses can improve the safety and outcomes of patients in nursing care.

 References

Liu, J., Zheng, J., Liu, K., Liu, X., Wu, Y., Wang, J., & You, L. (2019). Workplace violence against nurses, job satisfaction, burnout, and patient safety in Chinese hospitals. Nursing Outlook, 67(5), 558–566. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.OUTLOOK.2019.04.006

LynneEkkens, C., & AnnGordon, P. (2022). Struggling to Promote a Safe Culture: A Quasi-Experimental Research Study to Reduce Medication Errors Using Mindfulness. Struggling to Promote a Safe Culture: A Quasi-Experimental Research Study to Reduce Medication Errors Using Mindfulness. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781529799514

Mohebi, Z., Bijani, M., & Dehghan, A. (2024). Investigating safe nursing care and medication safety competence in nursing students: a multicenter cross-sectional study in Iran. BMC Nursing, 23(1), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1186/S12912-023-01684-0

Tariq, R. A., Vashisht, R., Sinha, A., & Scherbak, Y. (2023). Medication Dispensing Errors and Prevention. StatPearls. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519065/

ORDER A PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER HERE

We’ll write everything from scratch

1. Introduce the topic of safety, and explain what it means as it relates to nursing in general.
2. Describe the key points of the paper (what you are going to talk about). Choose 1 subtopic-safety problem-medication errors, patient falls, nurse needle stick injuries, patient identification, communication breakdown
   

   Safety in Nursing Practice- Understanding Medication Errors and Their Prevention

3. Capture the reader’s interest (could provide a statistic about your chosen safety problem)
4. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the importance of safety related to your chosen safety problem.

Safety in Nursing

1. Describe why safety related to your chosen subtopic is important, (based on the article)
2. Describe at least 3 examples of how safety related to your chosen subtopic is used in nursing.
3. Describe what happens if safety related to your chosen subtopic is compromised.
4. In this section, you will need to provide in-text citations from your scholarly article.

Personal Perspective

1. Describe why you think safety is important in nursing.
2. As a future nurse, how will you promote safety related to your chosen subtopic when you care for patients?

Conclusion

1. Summarize your key points from the paper, and reword from the introduction.
2. End with an important sentence that clearly states the importance of safety in nursing.