Strategies to Reduce Medication Errors

Alomari, Sheppard-Law, Lewis, & Wilson. (2020). Effectiveness of Clinical Nurses' Interventions in reducing medication errors in a pediatric ward. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 29(17-18), 3403. http://doi-org.library.capella.edu/10.1111/jocn.15374

The purpose of this article was to implement a bundle of interventions that were developed by clinical nurses, rather than managerial, to determine if those interventions could reduce the number of medication administration errors. Many hospitals fail to use clinical nurses when implementing new practices to help reduce medical errors. In this study, nurses who were working the floor were able to provide feedback on what they thought would help reduce the number of medication administration errors and implement those practices over a set amount of time. In that time, medication administration errors were reduced by 56.9% even though the number of patients and the number of medications administered had increased. Through the collaboration of real-world experience, clinical nurses were able to implement interventions that were effective in reducing medication administration errors, a practice that should be utilized among many hospitals and healthcare settings. This article is relevant to medication errors as it addresses the issue of medication errors and works to correct those errors in a way that involves the nursing staff, rather than just administration. 

Kavanagh, & Donnelly. (2020). A lean approach to improve medication administration safety by reducing distractions and interruptions. Journal of Nursing Care Quality, 35(4), E58–E62. DOI: 10.1097/NCQ.0000000000000473

This article sets out to determine how reducing distractions and interruptions can improve patient safety and reduce medication errors. This study is based on an inpatient psychiatric facility that faces many distractions during popular medication administration times such as patient and family distractions, phone calls, unrelated conversations, physicians, and alarms. A plan was put in place to reduce these distractions and give the nurses a quiet, distraction free area to prepare medications. By doing so, nurses were able to complete their five rights of drug administration making for safer medication administration. This article is included to show how knowing what distractions affect our concentration and working to reduce those distractions can help in improving patient and care and decreasing medication errors. 

Mula, & Chimwemwe. (2019). The examination of nurses' adherence to the 'five rights' of antibiotic administration and factors influencing their practices: A mixed methods case study at a tertiary hospital, Malawi. Malawi Medical Journal, 31(2). https://doi.org/library.capella.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fscholarly-journals%2Fexamination-nurses-adherence-five-rights%2Fdocview%2F2543473628%2Fse-2

Nurses' use the five rights of drug administration as a standard to give patient's medications to try and reduce medication errors. Those five rights are right patient, right drug, right dose, right dose, and right route. These rights are not a fail safe however, and even if used on every patient, medication errors can occur. This article followed nurses and their patients, determined what errors were made and what those errors were. They were then referenced against the five rights of drug administration to determine if it was used and if it could have prevented the medication error. This is an important resource for preventing medication errors as the five rights of drug administration is still the standard and should be used in every day practice.