Enhancing Quality and Safety in a health care setting.

Preventable medication errors can occur at any stage of the medication process; during prescription, registration of orders, during data entry of orders, or during preparation and administration of the medication. The riskiest are errors occurring at the administration stage. Medication administration errors are linked to adverse drug events that cause patient harm, a prolonged state of illness, patient dissatisfaction with care, and increased costs of care for both the patient and the health system (Elliott et al., 2021). This paper will explain the factors that lead to adverse drug events during medication administration and provide evidence-based practice solutions to improve patient safety and reduce care costs. The paper will also review how nurses can coordinate to improve quality and safety and reduce costs. Finally, it will identify stakeholders with whom nurses would coordinate to drive safety enhancements with medication administration.

Factors Leading to Adverse Drug Events Related to Medication Administration Errors

Adverse drug events (ADEs) are preventable adverse events in healthcare settings that occur when a patient is harmed by the medications administered. Adverse drug events risk patient safety and significantly impact the quality of care patients receive. Additionally, ADEs occur when a medication error occurs during the drug administration process, leading to the patient experiencing a harmful reaction to the administered medications. There are various factors contributing to the occurrence of ADEs in medication administration. A major factor for ADEs is a reaction between two or more medications that a patient has received due to a conflict in the medications’ pharmacological properties. The drug-drug interaction leading to ADEs is majorly unpredictable and, in most cases, results in an increased risk of morbidity and patient mortality (Noor, 2022). Another factor leading to ADEs in medication administration is related to prolonged use of the same medication or a combination of medications. Prolonged drug use can reduce the efficiency of drug clearance from the patient’s bodily systems, leading to toxic concentrations (Gotou et al., 2022). This not only risks patient harm, but it also can lead to dependency. Other factors leading to ADEs are the age-related increase in drug use due to comorbid health conditions, individual patient-specific factors such as allergies to certain medications, the number of medications an individual takes at a time, type of medications, especially those that risk addiction such as opioids, route of medication administration, and the dosage administered.