Medication Errors

Short Description:
A medication error is a preventable adverse effect of a patient taking the wrong medication or dosage, whether or not it is evident or harmful to the patient. Medication errors can be a source of serious patient harm, including death.

Potential Intervention Approaches:
– Medical staff education
– Packaging improvements
– Patient medication safety training
Keywords for Articles:
medication administration, medication errors, medication safety

References:
Cohen, M. (2016). Medication errors (miscellaneous). Nursing. 46(2):72, February 2016. DOI: 10.1097/01.NURSE.0000476239.09094.06

Institute for Healthcare Improvement. (2017). Improve Core Processes for Administering Medications. http://www.ihi.org/resources/Pages/Changes/ImproveCoreProcessesforAdministeringMedications.aspx

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2012). Table 6: Categories of Medication Error Classification. http://www.ahrq.gov/professionals/quality-patient-safety/patient-safety-resources/resources/match/matchtab6.html

Schmidt, K., Taylor, A., & Pearson, A. (2017). Reduction of medication errors: A unique approach. Journal of Nursing Care Quality. 32(2), April/June 2017, 150–156.

Instructions

Note: The requirements outlined below correspond to the grading criteria in the scoring guide. At a minimum, be sure to address each point. In addition, you are encouraged to review the performance-level descriptions for each criterion to see how your work will be assessed.

For this assessment, research best practices related to a current health care problem. Your selected problem or issue will be utilized again in Assessment 3. To explore your chosen topic, you should use the first two steps of the Socratic Problem-Solving Approach to aid your critical thinking.

View the Assessment Topic Areas media piece and select one of the health care problems or issues in the media piece to research. Write a brief overview of the selected topic. In your overview:
Summarize the health care problem or issue.
Describe your interest in the topic.
Describe any professional experience you have with this topic.
Identify peer-reviewed articles relevant to health care issue or problem.
Conduct a search for scholarly or academic peer-reviewed literature related to the topic and describe the criteria you used to search for articles, including the names of the databases you used. You will select four current scholarly or academic peer-reviewed journal articles published during the past 3–5 years that relate to your topic.
Refer to the NHS-FPX4000: Developing a Health Care Perspective Library Guide to help you locate appropriate references.
Use keywords related to the health care problem or issue you are researching to select relevant articles.
Assess the credibility and explain relevance of the information sources you find.
Determine if the source is from an academic peer-reviewed journal.
Determine if the publication is current.
Determine if information in the academic peer-reviewed journal article is still relevant.
Analyze academic peer-reviewed journal articles using the annotated bibliography organizational format. Provide rationale for inclusion of each selected article. The purpose of an annotated bibliography is to document a list of references along with key information about each one. The detail about the reference is the annotation. Developing this annotated bibliography will create a foundation of knowledge about the selected topic. In your annotated bibliography:
Identify the purpose of the article.
Summarize the information.
Provide rationale for inclusion of each article.
Include the conclusions and findings of the article.
Write your annotated bibliography in a paragraph form. The annotated bibliography should be approximately 150 words (1–3 paragraphs) in length.
List the full reference for the source in APA format (author, date, title, publisher, et cetera) and use APA format for the annotated bibliography.
Make sure the references are listed in alphabetical order, are double-spaced, and use hanging indents.
Summarize what you have learned from developing an annotated bibliography.
Summarize what you learned from your research in a separate paragraph or two at the end of the paper.
List the main points you learned from your research.
Summarize the main contributions of the sources you chose and how they enhanced your knowledge about the topic.
Example Assessment: You may use the following to give you an idea of what a Proficient or higher rating on the scoring guide would look like: