NHS FPX 4000 Assessment 4 Analyzing a Current Health Care Problem or Issue NHS-FPX 4000 Developing a Health Care Perspective

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Analyzing a Current Health Care Problem or Issue

Patient safety is vital in the healthcare sector, ensuring the well-being of individuals by preventing errors, minimizing risks, and promoting a culture of continuous improvement in healthcare practices. Medication errors are one such issue that compromises patient safety. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive overview of medication errors, encompassing their definition, prevalence, causative factors, solutions to address the issue, and ethical implications of those solutions. By delving into the intricacies of medication errors, this paper aims to empower healthcare professionals and policymakers to implement effective interventions that safeguard patient well-being.

Elements of the Problem

Medication errors significantly threaten patient safety, encompassing mistakes during prescribing, dispensing, and administering. Such errors can result in adverse health outcomes and life-threatening complications for the patients. According to a study by Tabatabaee et al. (2022), medication errors are considered the third leading cause of mortality in the United States. In the U.S., it is estimated that medication errors influence approximately 1.5 million people yearly, with a treatment cost of $3.5 billion. Globally, this economic impact exceeds $42 billion annually (Shitu et al., 2020).

According to the World Health Organization, medication errors are resulting in single mortality every day in the United States. Thus, the organization emphasizes the need to address the issue using efficient methods to ensure patients remain safe during their healthcare journeys (Naseralallah et al., 2023). Several factors, such as inadequate communication between healthcare providers, obscured prescriptions, look-alike and sound-alike drugs, interruptions during medication management, and lack of trained staff, are leading causes of preventable medication errors. Other systemic issues, for instance, unavailability of standardized protocols, technological insufficiencies, and excessive workload, may aggravate such errors. Therefore, there is a significant need to address the issue and identify effective solutions. 

The scholarly resources presented above are credible and relevant to the topic of this assessment – medication errors. These resources fulfill the CRAAP (currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose) criteria, an evaluative method for recognizing credible resources. Moreover, these resources provide explicit information about medication errors, their prevalence, and their impact on patients. Such information is essential for healthcare professionals to take adequate measures to eradicate the problem and maintain patient safety. 

Analyze

The specific incident that this assessment focuses on is the incorrect administration of an antibiotic to the wrong patient. This event was observed during clinical orientation, where a nurse administered a Piperacillin and Tazobactam antibiotic combination to an allergic patient. The patient immediately survived an anaphylaxis reaction, ultimately resulting in an increased length of hospital stay. This issue is important to a baccalaureate-prepared nurse because medication administration is vital to nurses’ job descriptions. A nurse must be adequately trained and competent to prevent errors and improve patient safety through proper medication handling and management. 

Definition and Causes of the Problem

Medication errors are those stoppable incidents that could result in patient injury due to inaccurate medication management by healthcare professionals or patients (Shitu et al., 2020). The above mentioned incident results from several risk factors, such as nurses’ lack of concentration while administering medication. This lack of concentration can be because of unnecessary interruptions in clinical areas. A study reveals that 91% of nurses perform medication errors due to distractions during medication administration (Raja et al., 2019). Another cause of such an error is the need to follow the rights of medication administration: the right patient, the right drug, the right time, the right dose, and the right route. The Five Rights of Medication Administration framework provides standardized guidelines for nurses to follow when administering medications to ensure patient safety and correct administration of drugs (Hanson & Haddad, 2022). 

Who is Involved? The Groups Impacted

The patient is the one who is affected by this specific incident the most. The error became harmful as the patient was allergic to PipTazo. The incorrect administration resulted in allergic reactions, eventually increasing hos