NHS FPX 4000 Assessment 3 Analyzing a Current Health Care Problem or Issue Analyzing a current health care problem or issue Medication errors 

NHS FPX 4000 Assessment 3 Analyzing a Current Health Care Problem or Issue

Analyzing a current health care problem or issue

Medication errors 

The mortality rate due to different medication errors in the United State is between 7,000 and 9,000. Medication errors leading to adverse effects can easily cross hundreds of thousands of patients. Medication errors increase health care costs by $40 billion for every 7 million patients every year (Tariq et al., 2020). As a result, it is critical to address the issue to increase patient satisfaction, quality care, nurse competencies, coordination between health care and pharmacies, and establish a high-performing health care facility. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the medication error problems and solutions to mitigate them to propose and provide an action plan to implement the solution by considering its effectiveness and ethical implications. The paper first identifies different factors and elements that are associated with the issue, effects of these factors and issue, different types of medication errors, different solutions adopted by health care institutions, critical analysis of the solutions, proposed solution, its ethical consideration, and evidence-based change implementation model to implement and evaluate the solution.  

NHS FPX 4000 Assessment 3 Analyzing a Current Health Care Problem or Issue

Elements of the problem/issue

Medication errors can have either be harmful or harmless, but it decreases the quality of care, increases conflict between health care professionals, pharmacy, medical transcriptionist, and other stakeholders (Thompson et al., 2018). Also, it reduces the trust of patients in health care. The elements of the problem are packaging errors, prescription errors, dispensing errors, drug administration, poor communication, and adverse drug reactions (Hammoudi et al., 2017). 

Packaging errors are of two types. The first one is related to poor printing and wrong information. Wrong information includes dosage, similar names, and chemical composition errors. This issue can only be resolved if the nurses observe adverse effects and report the effect to investigate the medication if the package has the right information, but the wrong product or vice versa (Gilmartin-Thomas et al., 2017). Also, dispensing unit can identify it if there are minor errors on the packaging. This error can lead to increased health complications and pose threats to the patients as medicine can be completely different due to packaging errors (Brass et al., 2018). The probability of errors is moderate.

The second type of error is related to a frequent and sudden change in the original packaging, name series, and color of the medicine. A study by Gilmartin-Thomas et al. (2017) that medication errors were observed after a change in packaging. It creates confusion among nurses due to a lack of communication between pharmacists and nurses regarding change of packaging (Brass et al., 2018). The probability of errors is moderate. 

Prescription errors ranged from 6% to 77.7% (Korb-Savoldelli et al., 2018). These errors are highly likely and they are related to lapses, mistakes, and errors in calculation due to similarities in pharmaceuticals and drug names, wrong and incomplete patient and drug information on prescription, and computerized physician order entry (CPOE) (Kadmon et al., 2017). Dispensing errors and prescription errors are related to discrepancies between the medicine delivered to patients or wards and the prescription (Abdel-Qader et al., 2020). The errors can vary from 1.25% to 45% (Kumar et al., 2019). 

Drug administration errors are mainly because of the wrong time of administration, wrong dosage and omission, wrong administration rate, wrong preparation, and administering medicines from dispensing error without verifying and contacting pharmacy dispense unit (Palese et al., 2019). The error rate varies from 8% to 25% and most of the errors are from nurses (Suclupe et al., 2020). Drug administration errors can result from interferences during administration time and individual errors. These errors are likely to occur because of increased turnover rate and patient count. 

Poor communication results in increasing the medication error chances as preventive and corrective actions cannot be implemented. This further creates a gap between prescription, dispense, and drug administration units leading to blame culture and conflicts. adverse drug reactions. Communication failures include no acknowledgment, poor suggestion, improper information, and delayed response (Hohenstein et al., 2016). This error is highly likely as dependence on prescription and dispensing software can lead to lower communication. 

Analysis of the pro