How Nurses Can Help Coordinate Care to Increase Patient Safety in Medication Administration and Reduce Costs

A majority of medication administration errors impact patient safety and increase care costs, which occur mostly in nursing care settings (Wondmieneh et al., 2020). This makes nurses essential to the efforts towards reducing and preventing medication administration errors and increasing patient safety. The reduction of the occurrence of medication administration errors can reduce the financial impacts associated with ADEs, therefore resulting in the reduction of healthcare costs. There are various ways nurses can help coordinate care to reduce and prevent medication administration errors, improve patient safety, and reduce care expenses. Firstly, nurses work at the bedside and are in close contact with patients. They can utilize this to educate patients about medication administration, types of medications, related side effects, risks of overdose or overuse, and potential drug interactions. Nurses can also help maintain the patients’ charts, both physical and electronic, to ensure that each member of the care team has access to the patient’s accurate historical information. This can help reduce the chances of providing medications that can lead to adverse reactions. Additionally, due to their proximity to patients during care, nurses can observe patients during and after medications have been administered and immediately report any signs of adverse reactions for timely treatment.