Medication Errors, Safety, Prevention and Reporting Essay

Medication Errors, Safety, Prevention and Reporting - Essay Example Medication errors that can lead to harmful effects on the patients can be prevented if nurses take the proper responsibilities of safety and reporting. Medication errors, particularly related to nursing, are defined as the errors that might lead to improper use of medication, causing harm to the patients, when the patient is in charge of some healthcare professional or nurses (Medication Errors, 2013). Medication Errors, Safety, Prevention, and Reporting:While medication errors may occur at any place, it has been found that the errors most commonly occur even when patients are in charge of any doctor, in nursing homes, under the case of nurses. It is highly essential and recommended to consult doctors before taking any medication in order to avoid harmful effects or injuries resultant from wrong medications. An example of medication error is intake of a prescription painkiller along with a non-prescription painkiller. In such cases, the dosage exceed the limit that should be taken an d thus cause damage to the livers. Thus safety measures need to be taken in order to avoid such errors in medication. Having a proper communication between the doctor and the nurses is one of the safest ways to clearly understand which drug is being provided to the patients (Medication Errors and Safety, 2010).It has been obtained that such medication errors can be prevented if certain cautious measures are considered. In many cases, the doctor may prescribe a wrong medicine, or the pharmacist may provide with a wrong drug. In such cases the nurses take the role to catch the wrong being taking place and protect the patients from the wrong treatments. However, when nurses make such mistakes themselves, they might have to pay for their mistakes. It can be considered that nurses being humans, mistakes might occur by them as well. Thus it is necessary to take certain steps that can at least minimize such mistakes, particularly when the lives of patients are at cost. For this purpose, th ere are certain rights of medication administration that if followed by the nurses can prevent such errors (Lampert, 2012). These rights include checking with two identifiers to ensure that the right medication is being provided to the intended patients. The names and the dates of birth of the patients should be checked in such cases along with checking the history of the patient. Checking the medication is another step that ensures that the intended medication is only provided and has not been mistaken with any other drug. The nurses should also check the appropriateness of the medication, and also the correctness of the amounts of the medications being offered to the patients (Lampert, 2012). These are some of the medication administration rights that need to be followed effectively by nurses in order to avoid medication errors. Some of the other preventive measures that can avoid medication