He Nurse' Responsibility in the Prevention of Medication Errors Essay

He Nurse' Responsibility in the Prevention of Medication Errors - Essay Example It is estimated that, at least one in ten inpatients have faced an incident of medication error, leading to severe injuries. Nurses have a very critical responsibility in the identification, reduction, and prevention of any foreseeable medical risks in hospital settings and other environment of medical care. To counter the increasing cases of medical errors, nurses and other practitioners should view every medical error as a complex system failure rather than an individual failure. As a result, effort towards the development of defenses to eradicate errors is more likely to advance patient safety rather than blaming individual responsibility. Medication errors entail preventable events (harm or death) caused by inappropriate medication or treatment procedures. Introduction The recent medical errors not only cost individual lives and health but also have a very extraneous financial burden that ranges from 21 billion to 37 billion dollars every year. Frequent medical errors lead to a r eduction in the level of satisfaction and trust in nurses and the entire healthcare system by the society. Safety concerns among patients constitute the main cause for patients seeking alternative care. Health practitioners have the responsibility of complying with the five main rights to safe medication, right route, right patient, right drugs, and right time. As stated by Ball (2010), in 2010, there are between 78 000 to 120, 000 reported cases of deaths caused by preventable and unnecessary medical errors annually. Additionally, thousands of inpatients are affected by nonfatal medical errors. Medication errors also lead to psychological and physical errors among the affected patients. Nurses have an incredibly decisive role in reducing cases of medication errors. They have the responsibility of ensuring that other health professionals do not make unnecessary mistakes and that they too do not make obvious mistakes. Thesis Statement The main role of any health professional is to pr otect and improve patients’ health. Nurses have the key responsibility of reducing cases of medication errors in health sectors. They have the mandate of utilizing all the available resources, strategies, and mechanisms to mitigate increased deaths and harm caused by medication errors. The cooperation between all involved players in the health sector can record significant improvement in-patient health Owing to increased deaths and physical injury caused by nurses’ medication errors, nurses have come up with a variety of strategies and measures to counter the alarming death rate. At present, there are several suitable methods for reducing the impact of medication errors. For starter, drug selection is extremely crucial especially among vulnerable people in the society. Nurses should avoid ordering drugs on Beers Criteria for patients who are 65 years and above. The Beers Criteria points out the drugs that should be avoided by aged patients who have a specified medical condition. The use of trailing zero after decimal in a dosage is another core reason for medication error. For instance, it is possible for health practitioners to misinterpret 1.0g with 10 g in the situation where the decimal is not legible. According to the existing medication regulations, zero is