NURS FPX 4020 Assessment 4: Improvement Plan Tool Kit ​​​​​​​Improvement Plan Tool Kit Medication administration errors  Medication administration errors reduce the quality of care and increase the threat to patient safety.

NURS FPX 4020 Assessment 4: Improvement Plan Tool Kit

Improvement Plan Tool Kit

Medication administration errors 

Medication administration errors reduce the quality of care and increase the threat to patient safety. As a result, an improvement plan based on EBP needs to be implemented to increase safety and quality. However, designing and implementing the plan requires resources such as guidelines, literature, protocols, measures, action plan, and training and education resources. The purpose of this improvement plan tool kit is to provide EBP resources for nurses to implement a QI plan at different levels to sustain safety measures in a health care setting. The kit identified four major themes of the plan. They are preventive measures, best EBP quality and safety practices, interprofessional collaboration, and education and training to increase competencies and skills.

Annotated bibliography

NURS FPX 4020 Assessment 4: Improvement Plan Tool Kit

Preventive measures

Kavanagh, A., & Donnelly, J. (2020). A lean approach to improve medication administration safety by reducing distractions and interruptions. Journal Of Nursing Care Quality, 35(4), E58-E62. https://doi.org/10.1097/ncq.0000000000000473

The article presents a lean approach, which includes value stream maps to identify possible interruptions during medication administration, real-time possible solutions to manage increased interruptions, and evaluating the impact of solutions to find best-suited solutions for different scenarios. The article uses a separate purpose-built medication administration room to reduce unrelated conversations. The article is useful as it identifies the need to collaborate with other nurses to manage interruptions and avoid conversations during the administration process to reduce errors. As nurses predict possible interruptions, other nurses can attend to the interruption to allow the medication administering nurse to cognitively active. The second important aspect is the article highlights the importance of real-time decision-making and outcome analysis to determine whether they were successful in avoiding interruptions and unwanted conversations. Reduced interruptions decrease error rate and increase throughput. As a result, it increases patient safety and timely care. This preventive measure is better than corrective measures, which will be applied post errors as preventive measures safeguard patients, reduces hospital stay, and health care cost. 

Palese, A., Ferro, M., Pascolo, M., Dante, A., & Vecchiato, S. (2019). “I am administering medication—please do not interrupt me”: red tabards preventing interruptions as perceived by surgical patients. Journal Of Patient Safety, 15(1), 30-36. https://doi.org/10.1097/pts.0000000000000209

This article uses different colored tabards to prioritize interruptions and allows patients and individuals who will interrupt to wait for the completion of the medication administration process. Also, the article helps in analyzing patient’s perceptions after implementing tabard protocol in health care. The red tabards with signs do not disturb reduced interruptions significantly, but some patients had negative perceptions as they could not contact nurses. As a result, this article recommends nurses to establish stronger nurse and patient relationships to educate patients about the importance of timely care and medication errors. This creates a supportive collaboration between health care professionals and patients, which aids in preventing delayed care and errors. The study also highlighted that only 10% of patients required emergency services. The nurses should understand the need to prioritize the patients who need emergency service whenever needed and collaborate together to handle other queries. 

Tariq, R., Vashisht, V., Sinha, A., & Scherbak, y. (2021). Medication dispensing errors and prevention. Retrieved 17 March 2021, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519065/

The article addresses the importance of identifying and preventing prescription errors, documentation errors, transcription errors, dispensing errors, administering errors, and monitoring by using error reporting system, checklists, and identifying different causes such as expired medication, incorrect duration, incorrect prescription, wrong dosage and strength, known allergen and contradictions. Also, the paper identifies the importance of evaluating illegible writing, t