Medication error essay

This essay may contain factual inaccuracies or out of date material. Please refer to an authoritative source if you require up-to-date information on any health or medical issue. Medication errors or adverse drug events are inappropriate dispensing and administration of drugs which cause harmful effects such as liver damage and excessive bleeding.

Medication administration error differs across the literature, it may be defined as a preventable event or deviation from procedures, policies and/or best practices that may result to inappropriate desired outcome in a patient. The vast majority of medication error occurs

Since consequences of medication error are severe, it is therefore the responsibility of each nurse to ensure every that every measure is accurately followed as they greatly influence medication use (Cima and Clarke, 2011). These measures include: Patient information; it is the most important and the first of the ‘five rights’.

There are indications from research that 60 percent of patients within hospitals miss their medications at some point. This translates to about 6.8 medications missed by every patient. In America alone, these medication errors result in injury for 1.5 million patients annually. Various factors are associated with medication errors in hospitals.