Introduction
Nursing involves a variety of responsibilities, that are crucial to help patients heal. While caring about the registrants, it is important to stay alert; thus, no mistake is overlooked. Prevention of possible medication errors or reporting already committed ones is an ethical duty of any nurse, since such inaccuracy might lead to morbidity or mortality of patients. Therefore, this paper will be dedicated to the analysis of bibliography on the topic of medication errors and patients’ safety.
In order to conduct a proper research, I will address the recommended method by identifying the elements of the topic and then defining them (Socratic problem-solving approach, n.d.). As a practical nurse, I focus on providing high-quality care in order to satisfy the patients and maintain their trust in the healthcare system. That is why, solving the issue of occurring medication errors is important to me. Unfortunately, in my experience there were several cases of medication inaccuracy, when the diseased were getting wrong drug dosages. Although, these situations were of minor negative impact to the patients, they increased my awareness of this problem and motivated me to delve into it.
Identifying Academic Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
For the search of the relevant articles, I resorted to the Summon Advanced Search tool, that helped me to filter information in Capella University Library’s collection. The clarification was made possible by using keywords such as “medication errors”, “ethics”, “patients’ safety” and “quality improvement”. In order to specify my search, I chose “nursing” as the discipline, and “journal article” as the content type. Additionally, I ticked the box near filters “peer-reviewed” and “full text online” and selected the “5 years” option of publication date; thus, I can easily access the recent scholarly articles.
Assessing Credibility and Relevance of Information Sources
To make sure that the sources I chose were reliable, I checked that they fulfilled a requirement of being no older than 5 years and were published in scholarly journals. Moreover, I personally checked that the authors of the selected articles are credible professionals in the field of nursing or medicine. Furthermore, I ensured that the texts had the information about medication errors and patients’ safety, required for my research.
Annotated Bibliography
Athanasakis, E. (2021). Registered nurses’ experiences of medication errors—An original research protocol: Methodology, methods, and ethics. The Canadian Journal of Nursing Research, 53(2), 171–183. Web.
The purpose of the given article is presenting a research protocol on inquiry of nurses’ experiences of medication errors, along with interpretative phenomenological analysis and relevant methodological and ethical deliberations of the author. The research goal was achieved through collecting data of corresponding nurses’ experiences, analyzing it and conducting a literature review that contained English language reports published since 1990 until February 2019. The sources originated from such acknowledged databases as PubMed, British Nursing Index, Cumulative Index to Allied Health Literature, Science Direct, and Wiley Online Library. Moreover, the paper incorporated the author’s personal methodological and ethical considerations. The presented results of the research included the considerations of methodological and ethical aspects of how nurses dealt with medical errors, that could be used by fellow investigators. This article raised and addressed the question of hardships, that can be encountered in analyzing medical errors cases.
Dirik, H. F., Samur, M., Seren Intepeler, S., & Hewison, A. (2019). Nurses’ identification and reporting of medication errors. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 28, 931– 938. Web.
The examined article was targeted at researching involvement of the hospital nurses in the spotting and reporting of medication errors in Turkey. The authors conducted a survey among 135 nurses, who had to examine 18 sample cases of medication errors’ occurrences and state their opinion on how they would report them. The obtained results were analyzed via chi-square and Fisher’s exact methods. The research is concluded with the statement that according to statistics, nurses have the ability to identify medication errors, however, mostly, they are resistant to report them to the administration. Therefore, the mediation errors are more likely to be reported by the physicians. The reviewed article is fitting for my research, since it provides practical evidence of how widespread the issue of ignoring the reporting of medication errors among nurses is. In addition, it mentions the importance of establishing a commonly agreed definition of medical error, thus, the patients’ safety can be increased.
Jang, S. J., Lee, H., & Son, Y. J. (2021). Perceptions of patient safety culture and medication error reporting among early- and mid-career female nurses in South Korea. International journal of environmental research and public health, 18(9), 4853. Web.
The following article is dedicated to identifying the link between nurses’ professional experience and their likelihood of reporting a medication error along with their understanding of patients’ safety culture. The authors conducted the research on the base of cross-sectional, secondary data analysis design. The respondents were early and mid-career nurses, who were surveyed in accordance to Korean Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture and single-item self-report measure on disclosing medication errors. Subsequently, there was a conclusion that early-career nurses with a high level of patients’ safety culture tended to report medication errors 2.4 times more often compared to those with lower levels of patients’ safety culture. However, despite the age of the nurse, the overall tendency of reporting medication errors was low. Therefore, the rationale for including this paper in my research is its contribution to the discovery of the factors behind the possible poor quality of patients’ safety provided by nurses.
Strube-Lahmann, S., Müller-Werdan, U., Klingelhöfer-Noe, J., Suhr, R., & Lahmann, N. A. (2022). Patient safety in home care: A multicenter cross-sectional study about medication errors and medication management of nurses. Pharmacology research & perspectives, 10(3), e00953. Web.
In this article, the issue of medication errors occurring at home care facilities was raised. The authors aimed to discover the frequency and the reasons of such cases, since that field of research was still mostly unsearched. In order to achieve the goal of the study, the authors examined almost 500 trained nurses, who worked for different home care services. The data collected through investigation was analyzed via a multiple logistic regression model. As a result, the authors found out that possible influence sources of medication errors were insufficient quality management or absence of regular nurses’ trainings. Additionally, the study found no correlation between the amount of medication error reports and such nurses’ characteristics as their professional experience, number of clients per shift and type of work. Therefore, in order to improve patients’ safety, the proper and regular trainings along with strict management measures should be applied. This paper is relevant to my research, since it provides information about medication errors, made by out-patients nurses and their attitude towards reporting them.
Conclusion
The conducted examination of the scholarly journal articles allowed me to improve my knowledge of medication errors and patients’ safety, which are essential topics in nursing. More specifically, thanks to the studied papers, I became more aware of the reasons that lead to occurrence of medication errors. Additionally, I found out that the research of medication errors’ elements might be limited. I also learned that there is a widespread practice of nurses’ silencing medication inaccuracy both in in-patient and out-patient facilities. All of this information will help me in my future study of the topic.
References
Athanasakis, E. (2021). Registered nurses’ experiences of medication errors—An original research protocol: Methodology, methods, and ethics. The Canadian Journal of Nursing Research, 53(2), 171–183. Web.
Dirik, H. F., Samur, M., Seren Intepeler, S., & Hewison, A. (2019). Nurses’ identification and reporting of medication errors. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 28, 931– 938. Web.
Jang, S. J., Lee, H., & Son, Y. J. (2021). Perceptions of patient safety culture and medication error reporting among early- and mid-career female nurses in South Korea. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(9), 4853. Web.
Socratic problem-solving approach. (n.d.). Capella University. Web.
Strube-Lahmann, S., Müller-Werdan, U., Klingelhöfer-Noe, J., Suhr, R., & Lahmann, N. A. (2022). Patient safety in home care: A multicenter cross-sectional study about medication errors and medication management of nurses. Pharmacology Research & Perspectives, 10(3), e00953. Web.