Clinical Nursing Practice Problem
The selected nursing problem is the issue of medication errors, which falls under the topic of safety. The issue of medication errors is the most important nursing practice problem due to several reasons. First, patients’ lives are put in danger when nurses make errors when administering medicine. In extreme cases, patients might die and given that nurses’ primary duty is to save lives, such an occurrence could be devastating.
In addition, even in mild cases of medication errors, patients suffer unnecessarily due to prolonged stay at the hospital, increased cost of care, and poor care outcomes. In most cases, patients sue nurses and hospitals for damages associated with medication errors. Legal cases are expensive and thus they take away hospital resources that could have been used to improve quality of care and patient outcomes. The involved nurses could also have their practicing licenses revoked, thus affecting their career progress.
The rationale behind the selection of this practice problem is that medication errors are avoidable. All the issues associated with medication errors could be averted by using different strategies to ensure compliance and keenness among nurses when handling patients. Therefore, as part of improving quality of care and patient outcomes, this problem should be addressed conclusively.
Clinical Nursing PICOT Question
In hospitalized patients (P), using electronic health records (I), as compared to paper-based records (C), will reduce medication errors by nurses (O) in 6 months (T)
Define PICOT Elements
- P- (patient population/patients of interest): This denotes the population of patients that will be affected by a certain decision in clinical care. In this case, the P is hospitalized, patient.
- I- (Intervention): I am the expected treatment or intervention that is intended to be used to address the problem in question. In the above case, the use of EHR is the proposed intervention.
- C- (Comparison): C is the alternative option that can be compared with the proposed intervention or treatment. In this case, it is the use of paper-based records.
- O- (Measurable outcome): O is the desired or expected clinical outcome that can be measured to assess the effectiveness of the intervention. In this case, the outcome is reduced medication errors by nurses.
- T- (Time frame in months): T is the projected timeframe for the clinical intervention to be demonstrated. In the above case, the expected time is 6 months.
Evidence Retrieval Process and Summary
The evidence contained in Liao et al.’s article is relevant to the chosen nursing practice because it assesses whether EHR systems reduce medication errors among patients in the intensive care unit.
This evidence was chosen because it directly addresses the role of EHR in reducing medication errors in hospitalized patients. The results given in this evidence paper are expected to mirror the findings that will be obtained from the PICOT question associated with the selected nursing practice problem.
Implications of the Evidence
The evidence suggested that EHR systems could potentially reduce medication errors among hospitalized patients in the long term (Liao et al., 2017).
The nursing evidence-based practice should focus their next research on the nursing practice problem of medication errors because the benefits that could be gained from such a decision are numerous. Patient outcomes would improve, hospitals would be saved from costly legal cases, and nurses will advance their careers without the impediment of having their licenses revoked due to committing medication errors.
Reference
Liao, T. V., Rabinovich, M., Abraham, P., Perez, S., DiPlotti, C., Han, J., … Honig, E. (2017). Evaluation of medication errors with implementation of electronic health record technology in the medical intensive care unit. Open Access Journal of Clinical Trials, 9, 31-40. Web.