The Role of Nurses in Care Coordination and Patient Safety

 

Nurses should adopt optimized workflow, collaborate with other healthcare providers, and provide patient education to achieve care coordination. They can achieve optimized workflow by embracing double checks, limiting distractors, and reducing interruptions (MacDowell et al., 2021). Double-checking allows independent nurses to verify and approve medication before administering it. Independent verifications increase the accuracy of medication administration (MacDowell et al., 2021). As a result, the risk of M.A. errors is reduced, and patient safety is increased. Reduced MA errors are associated with high recovery rates and shortened hospital stays, and hence, reduced treatment costs (Tsegaye et al., 2020). Nurses should work in concert with other healthcare providers to achieve patient safety. As key stakeholders in medication administration and patient monitoring, nurses should update the interdisciplinary team on the treatment process (Tsegaye et al., 2020). Collaboration ensures and promotes accountability among team members. This will increase the quality of care, reduce M.A. errors, and lower treatment costs. Furthermore, nurses should embrace patient education. These sessions should address aspects such as medication adherence and medication use.
Stakeholders Involved in Care Coordination
Nurses should collaborate with other interdisciplinary team members to achieve care coordination and reduce medication administration errors. These members include pharmacists, physicians, and administrators. Hospital administrators play a key role in resource allocation to implement strategies for mitigating M.A. errors. For instance, they should allocate adequate resources to acquire relevant healthcare technology such as barcodes and smart infusion pumps. Furthermore, administrators play a key role in formulating policies that optimize workflow, such as limiting distractions and interruptions in medication administration units. Physicians are key in performing accurate diagnoses and formulating patient-centered treatment plans (Rodziewicz et al., 2021).

Moreover, they educate patients about their condition and the relevance of adherence to the treatment plan. Lastly, pharmacists enforce the rational use of medication such as antimicrobials (Rodziewicz et al., 2021). To accomplish this, they collaborate with physicians and nurses. Also, they provide pertinent patient education regarding medication use. Patient education entails medication administration (insulin administration), medication adherence, and potential adverse effects.
References
Härkänen, M., Vehviläinen-Julkunen, K., Murrells, T., Rafferty, A. M., & Franklin, B. D. (2019). Medication administration errors and mortality: Incidents reported in England and Wales between 2007 ̶ 2016. Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy, 15(7), 858–863. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sapharm.2018.11.010