NHS FPX 4000 Assessment 2 Applying Research Skills ​​​​​​​Annotated bibliography and summary Medication errors 

NHS FPX 4000 Assessment 2 Applying Research Skills

Annotated bibliography and summary

Medication errors 

Near misses and adverse effects may or may not harm the patients, but they create panic and distrust in patients leading to lower quality of care. Medication errors are one of the major reasons for adverse effects (Desai et al., 2016). There are different types of medication errors, which include dosage errors, wrong or improper package information, drug-drug interactions, mismatch in patient’s electronic health records, and poor medication administration (Schmidt et al., 2017). Some of the errors can have an adverse effect on patients and even lead to morbidity and mortality. In their study, Kang et al. (2017) reported that at least five near misses every month, 14.8% of dispensing errors, 4.3% administration errors, and 43.9% prescription errors were from 32 pharmacies. However, only 37.1% prescription errors, 57.4% administration errors, and 43.7% dispensing errors were reported. Salar et al. (2020) highlighted that prevalence of errors varies from 32.1% to 94%. Also, 23%, 38%, and 39% of medication errors were associated with pharmacies, nurses, and general practitioners respectively (Salar et al., 2020). 

Medication errors increase the burden on dispensing, administration, and packaging units. Cumulatively, it leads to work burden on the nurses and reduces patient satisfaction level and trust in health care (Musharyanti et al., 2019). Further, blame culture due to medication errors lead to delay in care and creates conflicts. As a result, different systems and protocols such as the use of electronic error reporting, root cause analysis, use of tabards, mobile app-based anonymous reporting, training nurses to report errors, and other systems to reduce and prevent errors (Bosma et al., 2020). As a nurse, I prefer to not commit any kinds of medication errors and prevent errors by implementing different protocols and technologies to increase the quality of care. However, it is important to select a technique or combination of techniques that are efficient (Musharyanti et al., 2019). 

Personal experience with medication error

I worked in an ICU unit of an acute health care setting with an emergency unit nearby. I was assigned a 65-year-old man with cardiac arrhythmia and a 53-year-old woman who was under colonoscopy prep. While administrating medication, I was approached by the family of a patient who was in ER because of cardiac arrest. As ER had very few nurses, other patients started to approach me. It not only affected my schedule of medication administration, but it led to a medication error as I accidentally gave epinephrine to colonoscopy prep patients instead of midazolam. Further, I could not administer a prescription of Rythmol 150 mg as Rythmol SR 325 mg was sent from the pharmacy, but the prescription mentioned Rythmol 150 mg. Change in dosage can lead to complications (Salar et al., 2020). Because of no direct communication to the pharmacy, the medication administration was delayed. Also, due to blame culture, I had no anonymous channel to report the error. Later, the pharmacy unit argued that they sent the right medication and blamed me as I did commit a medication error for another patient. As a result, it is important to protect nurses from committing any medication administration errors due to interference from other patients (Kang et al., 2017) and analyze whether different techniques affect patient’s perceptions (Stewart et al., 2020). 

NHS FPX 4000 Assessment 2 Applying Research Skills

Identifying peer-reviewed articles relevant to health care issue

To analyze the error and find the solutions, only peer-reviewed journal articles from the last five years that concentrate on the use of tabards and medication error reporting systems were selected. Databases such as CINAHL Plus, EMBASE, MEDLINE, Cochrane Library, and SAGE were used to search the articles. Keywords such as tabards to prevent medication errors, medication error report system, preventing medication errors, and tabards for nurses to find the articles. Filters such as date of publishing, clinical trials, and language to filter the results. Out of 631 results, 20 quantitative articles were selected. Further, the final four articles were selected after analyzing the abstract, type of study, research methodology, journal type, and abstract. 

Credibility and relevance of information sources

Credibility ad relevance of sources was analyzed by identifying the qualification of the authors, the relevance of their qualification to the problem, previous research by authors on the topic, whether funding and bias included, year of publication and relevance to current nursing environment, m