Nurs 4020 Evidence-Based Safety Improvement Plan for Safe Medication Administration

Every medication in the hospital will be labeled with a unique barcode. In addition, each patient’s barcode will have all the crucial health and medication information. When a patient prescription is ordered, it will be transmitted electronically to the pharmacy and keyed into the computer system by the pharmacist (Naidu & Alicia, 2019). The pharmacist will then dispense the bar-coded medication dose to the inpatient unit. During drug administration, nurses will use a barcode reader to scan the barcodes on their staff identification badge, the patient’s wristband, and the medication (Hong et al., 2021). If the system fails to match the medication to be administered with the prescription order in the system, it will alert the nurse.  

Patient education will aim at mitigating medication errors that occur at home. It is essential for health care providers to utilize clear communication strategies and regularly educate patients, particularly when their medication plans are modified. Patient education is part of the safety improvement plan because it is a fundamental component of drug management, especially with high-risk medications such as insulin, opioids, and anticoagulants (Kusch et al., 2018). Patients will be educated routinely about their medications to ensure they understand the drugs’ indication, intended outcomes, and symptoms of adverse events. Each patient will be guided through their prescribed, including their color, shape, and packaging. Patients will be recommended to always double-check the capsule/tablet color after a refill (Kusch et al., 2018). Besides, they will be educated that if the prescription was not changed, the tablet color should not either, and they should inform the pharmacists if there are discrepancies.

Existing Organizational Resources That Could Be Leveraged To Improve a Safety Improvement Plan for Safe Medication Administration

Organizational resources that can be leveraged to improve the safety improvement plan include human resources and technological advancements such as Telemedicine and the EHR. The human resource, including nurses, pharmacists, and physicians, can educate patients about their medications and teach them strategies to prevent medication errors at home (Kusch et al., 2018). Besides, the human resource can be encouraged to give evidence-based ideas to enhance the safety improvement plan further. In addition, technological advancements in the organization, such as Telemedicine, can facilitate patient education and follow-up to ensure they are taking the right medications at the correct dosages. The EHR can be used to provide patient data that will be entered into the BCMA database.

Conclusion

RCA helps identify what transpired, establish why the problem occurred, and embark on the necessary improvements and amendments. The purpose of the RTA was to identify the causes of MAEs, which nurses perpetrated in the unit. Factors associated with MAEs in the unit included inadequate knowledge of medications and drug administration protocol, nurse fatigue due to high work overload, insufficient time, distractions, and assumptions. The proposed safety improvement plan will include adopting BCMA technology and providing patient education to minimize medication errors at the hospital and at home.

References

Hong, J. Y., Ivory, C. H., VanHouten, C. B., Simpson, C. L., & Novak, L. L. (2021). Disappearing expertise in clinical automation: barcode medication administration and nurse autonomy. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 28(2), 232-238. https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocaa135

Kusch, M. K., Haefeli, W. E., & Seidling, H. M. (2018). How to meet patients’ individual needs for drug information – a scoping review. Patient preference and adherence, 12, 2339–2355. https://doi.org/10.2147/PPA.S173651

MacDowell, P., Cabri, A., & Davis, M. (2021). Medication administration errors. PSNet. https://psnet.ahrq.gov/primer/medication-administration-errors

Martin-Delgado, J., Martínez-García, A., Aranaz, J. M., Valencia-Martín, J. L., & Mira, J. J. (2020). How Much of Root Cause Analysis Translates into Improved Patient Safety: A Systematic Review. Medical Principles and practice: international journal of the Kuwait University, Health Science Centre, 29(6), 524–531. https://doi.org/10.1159/000508677

Naidu, M., & Alicia, Y. L. Y. (2019). Impact of barcode medication administration and electronic medication administration record system in clinical practice for an effective medication administration process. Health, 11(05), 511. https://doi.org/10.4236/he