Medication Errors

The healthcare problem identified is medication errors. Medication error is an error in the prescription, dispensing, and administration of a drug, irrespective of whether errors lead to adverse consequences (Dirik et al., 2019). My interest in the topic is based on my nursing profession, where I have witnessed numerous medication errors among patients. I have observed providers prescribe medications that patients are allergic to or even can harm their wellbeing in the long run. As a nurse, I must ensure my patient safety is considered at every stage regardless of the conflict or conviction other physicians, pharmacists, or nurses have in their line of duty. My experience has taught me that confronting medication errors never ends well, and I have observed death in the emergency department. I have had my experience with poor medication prescription, which placed my patient in a coma for a week. The physician had prescribed Morphine to a five-year-old child who had suffered broken bones due to a fall. The physician calculated the required amount hurriedly and told me to give it to the patient. Immediately after, the patient began having heart complications, and measures were taken to stabilize the patient, but they were futile.

Peer-reviewed Articles for Medication Error

The criteria I used in searching for the four articles to discuss the medical problem were based on a preliminary evaluation of existing peer-reviewed papers in EBSCOhost and the Capella Online Library. The intention was to identify the keywords used about the medical topic. I identified five keywords to use: medication errors, medication reconciliation, patient safety, hospital, and adverse drug events. I then embarked on an inclusion-exclusion criterion encompassed peer-reviewed journals with open-source concepts published within the last four years in nursing, medical, and scientific research journals and had the keywords mentioned above. The papers must have also been published in English. The exclusion was peer-reviewed journals that were expert and non-quantitative or qualitative based on a systematic review, meta-analysis, and cohort studies. The relevance of the peer-reviewed articles was based on credibility, which means alignment with the topic of a medication error, reliability based on the authority of the authors, and validity based on the publication date post-2017. 

NURS PFX 4000 Assessment 2 Applying Research Skills

Annotated Bibliography

Alqenae, F. A., Steinke, D., & Keers, R. N. (2020). Prevalence and nature of medication errors and medication-related harm the following discharge from hospital to community settings: a systematic review. Drug safety, 43(6), 517-537. 

The study aimed to critically evaluate available evidence regarding the prevalence and nature of medication errors and medication-related harm following hospital discharge. The background of the study is based on the motivation to understand the epidemiology of medication errors and medication-related harm during the transition from secondary to primary care. The study evaluated published case studies from 1990 to 2019 across ten electronic databases. There was no restriction in the evaluation process. The study assessed fifty-four studies that determined that the medication error rates were as high as 53%, with most of the studies agreeing that there is more than 50% of incidences of medication errors. Other studies noted that adverse drug reaction rates were as high as 27%, while for pediatric patients, medication errors were as high as 66.3%, with adverse drug events as low as 9%. The article’s rationale is to provide information regarding medication errors and adverse drug events. 

Eslami, K., Aletayeb, F., Aletayeb, S. M. H., Kouti, L., & Hardani, A. K. (2019). Identifying medication errors in neonatal intensive care units: a two-center study. BMC Pediatrics, 19(1), 1-7. 

The study’s objective was to assess the types and frequency of medication errors in the NICU. The methodology used in the study was cross-sectional to evaluate two neonatal intensive care units of two hospitals over three months. The study evaluated demographic information, drug, and the number of prescriptions for each neonate based on medical records. The study’s results involving 688 prescriptions for 44 types of drugs noted that about 509 medication errors were relatively high for each patient. This meant that there were 74.8% of medication errors with the identification that phy">